TrueBlueGED

Your punishment should be needing to place an extra unit on Buffalo :p

Welcome to hell, where the fun people end up.

Please no. I'll do anything. Just not that.

...to Matt Moulson. Son of God? He is God!

Pretty sure he's a pylon.

He'd be an insane upgrade to our 4th line. Insane was supposed to be instant...but insane fits nicely too :lol:

That sounds vaguely familiar. And yea, there's no cap in the playoffs.

When did the Blackhawks do this? Honestly can't remember. Was it the Kane injury?

I believe myself and a few others predicted some would mistakenly attribute the Habs success this season to the swap of defensemen. They suggest he may have been done...two years ago. That contract is fugly. Yup. Nothing to see here. If he goes down and gets replaced by AHL-level goaltending again, they'll be on the outside looking in for the second straight year.

A few hundred grand isn't that big of a deal, but it does make you wonder if we could have gotten the number lower had we been willing to drag it into the season.

They'll pull a Miami Heat and say he's still not well.

Maybe your dog had a vision of the second half which induced the vomiting.

Being able to put Despres on LTIR really saved their bacon.

I have no idea how Lindolm got less than Risto, Jones, and Hamilton. He's better than every young defender to recently sign not named Ekblad.

Shouldn't you be trying to dig the puck out of the corner to entertain yourself rather than harassing me? :p

I'm not doing the legwork on this, but did our shooting and/or save percentages get better? Percentages explain past outcomes, possession predicts future outcomes. More or less, anyway. Strength of schedule, parade of backup goalies, better special teams...could be any number of things.

Another 2 points tonight for Jimmy Vesey. Even if Pi ends up painfully correct about Moulson, at least we can throw Vesey in his face :nana:

Good. I'm not even remotely a baseball fan, but that was dumb from the start.

It's worth noting that Leon Draisaitl started better than anyone last year. And he fell off tremendously as the season went on. Matthews may ultimately be better than Eichel, it's very much in the cards. But I don't know how anyone who watched the team last year could think Eichel is going to merely be a good 1st liner. He scored at a top-10 rate the second half of the season. Kid is going to be a star.

I split the season roughly into thirds, though the first third isn't quite a third. Just easier to do it by months, and looking at the data, cutting it differently wouldn't change much of anything. October 1 - December 1 CF%: 46.74 (26th) CF/60: 48.32 (28th) CA/60: 55.07 (17th) December 1 - February 1 CF%: 45.91 (24th) CF/60: 48.85 (25th) CA/60: 57.56 (19th) February 1 - end of season CF%: 47.12 (26th) CF/60: 51.98 (27th) CA/60: 58.33 (23rd) So no, the possession numbers did not improve as the season went on. Yes, it does.

The roster definitely matters, and I don't want my Bylsma criticism to be construed as giving Murray a free pass. I thought Murray had a pretty disappointing offseason in terms of addressing holes and adding NHL-caliber depth. We'll never know whether or not he tried to add beyond the Vesey and Stamkos not-meant-to-be's, but whether he just couldn't get the job done or didn't think there was a job to be done (or alternatively, simply felt the remaining available pieces were not worth pursuing), the roster's not as good as it could have been. But that doesn't absolve Bylsma of having a flawed system and misusing the talent that he does have at his disposal. It shouldn't absolve him, anyway.

It's not so much that they're tough to overcome as they're generally pretty reflective of the quality of the team.

Statistically, that's precisely what it is. As of this post, the RCP average is precisely the same (Clinton +5.5) as it was 10 days ago on October 16th. Besides, we'd expect some narrowing to occur after Trump's week of hell fades into the distance, but that doesn't mean the race is going to continue to tighten into a tie.

I love Larsson, but I'm becoming more concerned that he just doesn't have the offensive game to be a 3C on a contender.

I may possibly think about considering it at some point in the future I'm declining to specify at this time. So maybe. I need more information. -Can Reinhart play center at a high level? -If he can, is the organization comfortable keeping him there and running a top tier center spine? Or is the team dead set on him being Jack's running mate? If he can be the center many think he can, and the team is willing to run some combo of ROR-Eichel-Reinhart and attack teams with incredible balance, then I'm not willing to do it as it's robbing peter to pay Paul (quite literally pay, in this sense). But if he either can't play center well enough for whatever reason, or the team insists on him as a winger, then I make the trade. #1D simply has more value than even great wingers.