TrueBlueGED

Well, I was with you in the first paragraph. And then you had to go and get all....old....on me ? Edit: My radical opinion is the players wear the number they want to wear.

I will not make the obvious Skinner plays like a figure skater joke. I will not make the obvious Skinner plays like a figure skater joke. I will not make the obvious.....welp. So much for that.

Me too. But if he weren't a Sabre, I'd have wanted him to keel over. Without question.

As far as Skinner goes, at least you admit to being a for good edge work ? Carolina, I think, is the perfect example of what happens to a team of they don't have a real top center. They have a lot of pieces to like, but without that, it doesn't seem to matter. Of course, league average goaltending would help too.

I'm shocked you like Skinner. He plays like Derek Roy! Every irritating thing about Roy's game is there with Skinner.

I am very happy the Pominville spelling filter survived the board update.

Oh, I'm not about to go to any great lengths to find value in Beaulieu. I just think he's better than most do, but still would like to move on from him after his contract ends. My predictions at how people are going to react to certain hockey things >>>> my predictions about actual hockey things.

Are you looking at this year, or when he was with the Sabres? I'm talking about his last full year in Buffalo where he had the metrics of one of the worst players in the league. I believe he actually had a decent season with the Habs.

Deslauriers did not produce useful metrics when looking at the whole picture. For instance, his possession impact was so negative you'd swear it was a made up number. The player tracking data is gonna be really cool when people start taking a deep dive into it. Holy grail? Probably not, but it will add a ton, I think, to what we already know.

The thing I always have trouble squaring is...if he does these things with the frequency he is accused, how could he possibly produce useful metrics? It's like the Thomas Vanek is lazy meme that was so popular. My hypothesis is that Beaulieu's mistakes are so comically glaring that they get seared into our minds in a fashion that does not lend itself to the human brain putting it in proper perspective relative to what he does bring to the ice. This is not to say I think Beaulieu is good. I certainly do not. But I also do think he's a viable 3rd pair NHL defender, whereas I think the consensus is he's an AHL player.

Bogosian being a literal flat line is the funniest thing I've seen in awhile.

I'm not shocked at all. Everything Botterill and Housley have both done and said since coming in says they really do like Bogosian. Fools' gold will always have a buyer...and unfortunately, we've got two of them.

It's not much. $5 a month I think?

I would be, which is more of a commentary on our RHD depth chart than on my opinion of Casey. Only way I see him a regular scratch is if they keep Dahlin on the right or make another move there.

I dunno, look at all the hate Girgensons gets even though he's a perfectly useful depth player.

Eh, there's a difference between players who can be valuable depth on a good team versus those who are depth in a bad team. I was hoping for a few more of the former.

That's my reasoning. I don't think Housley strips either of them when their primary sins were being injured. I personally don't think Okposo's performance was caused by his offseason, but it's not hard to reason your way there. If we were coming in purely fresh this year, I think it would be Jack, Scandella, and maybe Berglund.

He wasn't a Sabre, and I still like the signing given the contract and available alternatives, but I'll go with Carter Hutton. He'll be more like his career average performance than the career best performance he had last season.

The worst kept secret in the world is that the captain is going to be Jack. We can discuss whether that's the right path to take, but I will be completely and utterly floored if it's anybody else. With the A's, I think they go to vets whom I hate: Bogosian and Okposo.

It'll be even more irritating if that's due to coaching decisions where Phil prefers Pominville to a young player.

Sigh. Another depth piece bites the dust.

Poor Rasmus. He should, but I don't think he will. For better or worse (see: it'll be worse), I think the team believes in Bogo. Edit: On topic, I think the answer is Mittelstadt. It's weird to say seeing as he doesn't really have anywhere to jump from, but I think he has a Keller-like rookie season.

Sidney Crosby's cap his is $8.7 million to match his number. Pittsburgh seems to be doing just fine.

No, my position is based on the whole of their NHL careers to date. That Reinhart made the NHL a year sooner and produced is to his credit, but I'm not sure that speaks to his projection so much as it does to where his development was at the time. Being NHL ready sooner doesn't mean he's NHL better now and in the future. The past two NHL seasons have seen Nylander be better both years, and Point better one of the two.

NHL reference has a 2-year moving average. Probably the better way to go about it would be to use Corsica and just apply their date filter to the last 3 years. I'm definitely okay dropping a player's first year or two when considering what they are and are likely to be, but I don't think that's necessarily a good idea when the players in question only have 2-3 full seasons under their belt. With respect to Samson in particular, given he had a season of two extremes, I definitely don't think anyone should be comfortable just projecting out the positive extreme going forward. It's possible that's what happens, but I don't think it's likely; or, at least not any more likely than he's really the negative extreme from this past season. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up with 55-60 points this year, continuing the general upward trend in his career. Finishing with over 70, as he was pacing for in the second half of the season, however, would genuinely shock me. Samson taking that kind of a leap is certainly without the set of possible outcomes, as players taking a leap like that isn't unprecedented or anything. But I think expecting it is setting yourself up for disappointment, and betting on it with a contract would be quite the mistake. TLDR: I think projecting out an extreme is a bad idea, especially when that extreme lines up with your preconceived notions of a player.