TrueBlueGED

Will he score 37 again? While spending most of his time centered by Mittelstadt instead of Matthews? Cmon man.

210 forwards had 30 points or more this season. I'd like to think I could find one for less than $6M. Here's the list.

@dudacek has mentioned it many times, but we'd all feel so much better about Nylander if he had spent the past two years putting up numbers in Sweden or the CHL. Thompson definitely sucks though. He took my O'Reilly bear away from me ?

Unfair to players, sure. But teams? They're probably thrilled they don't have to use a valuable protection slot on players with something as mundane as a limited NTC. Edit: It occurs to me that "exempt" was the wrong choice of words in my previous post. I simply meant a full NMC is the only thing that forces a team to protect a player during the draft. That's my memory of it, anyway.

I could be wrong, but I thought in the Vegas expansion draft the only thing that exempted a player was a full NMC.

Or maybe we should stop carrying vastly overpriced contracts so we can ice 12 NHL forwards? I can find someone to do what Marleau does for a lot less money. If I can't, then I'm not a very good GM. Finding a 3rd/4th line winger to net 30 points for less than top-6 forward money should not be a demanding proposition.

MacKinnon had also done nothing but regress since his rookie year when he signed that deal. The contract price reflects that. Hell, even in the first year of the new contract (his 4th in the league) he only put up 53 points in 82 games. Eichel was better in his 2nd and 3rd years in the league than MacKinnon was in his, and a lot better in that 4th season (which was this year for Eichel). Let's see where things go.

Hazing in general can have very real negative psychological effects. And that's normal workplace or team-based hazing. They were living together. I just wouldn't dismiss out of hand the possibility of real damage being done. Now, I'm not about to pump Nylander's tires as our answer to anything simply because COR has been gone for a longer period of time. Just saying that recovering from an abusive relationship of any kind isn't like flipping a light switch.

And if it contributed to a genuine mental health problem? What then?

Which half do we have him for? ?

How much better does adding Marleau make us? If we can't find a winger who can net us 37 points while providing zero in any other phase of the game, Botterill probably shouldn't be GM all too much longer.

At the time of signing, Bergeron's contract was 10.69% of the cap; Eichel's is 13.33%. Bergeron's contract is just as amazing in relative terms as it is in absolute value.

You've made no bones about being glad O'Reilly is gone because of his locker cleanout comments. I'm simply saying what athletes say publicly should be largely ignored when as a general rule, and particularly when their play on the ice completely contradicts their words off it. Skinner just functionally agreed to retire as a Sabre...who cares what he says? His actions said it all. He could have come out and said the same thing O'Reilly said and I wouldn't have cared because his actions matter more.

I mean, people keep telling me this is the year of the offer sheet....(it won't be, but some people I respect sure do believe it). Of those listed, I'd pay four 1sts for Point, Marner, Tkachuk, and Werenski without thinking twice.

Boy was my mental math there bad ? Mostly what I was trying to get at is you'll be hard-pressed to find a team willing to take on $9.4M of defensemen without a significant contract heading back our way. It's not going to be a pure cap space gain.

Do you want to spend $5.4M on a player who needs saving? A lot of the names on that list weren't lucky signings, though--players on that list are straight up better than Risto with a similar or lesser percentage of the cap at time of signing. Sure, Scheifele's contract is a better value than Eichel's, but they're at least comparable players.

Well, I think you can probably attach a boat anchor to Dahlin and he'll be able to make it work, even this early in his career. Without looking at a Risto replacement, my lineup would look something like this: Dahlin-XXX | Pilut-Montour | McCabe-Nelson The list of UFA's isn't great, but I bet you could get a Stralman on a reasonable contract to plug in..figure if you take the working parts of his and Bogosian's bodies, you could create a frankenanchor to attach to Dahlin for a year.

Conversely, he also gives up oodles defensively for a team that has trouble preventing goals against. Seth Jones signed the exact same contract Risto did, in the same year. He's a lot better. In fact, the list of comparable contracts has quite a few defensemen I would take over Risto: https://www.capfriendly.com/comparables/rasmus-ristolainen-7362

You could also choose to ignore all the fluff and focus on the substance of how effective players are on the ice.

It doesn't get ignored, it's just that total points by a defensemen is a tough stat to evaluate (special teams time, total ice time, etc.). Also, most Risto defenders don't point to his offense as what he brings...they'll say he handles the tough minutes, protects the front of the net, etc etc etc. There were 100 defensemen in 2018-19 with at least 1000 minutes played at even strength. Of those 100, Risto ranks 41st in points/60 minutes. Deconstructing that a little bit, he's 63rd in goals/60, 36th in primary assists/60, and 31st in secondary assists/60. Obviously, a couple assists or a goal off of a buttocks will skew these things, so I'd be careful with any kind of what-if anlaysis getting too specific. I think the picture as a whole says he produces even strength points at the rate of a #2 defenseman. Of course, the absolute value of this offense needs to be balanced against his defensive liabilities, which are pretty significant. I don't have time to do a full defensive breakdown of his stats, but my read on Risto is ultimately the following: I think he's best suited in a #4/5 role with power play time on a good team. Hide him as best you can defensively and let him score some points. Particularly since we have Dahlin to give the bulk of the PP work to, I don't think that's worth $5.4M AND I think you can probably find a GM who thinks like you (and others) that he's more valuable than this assessment, making for a nice trade piece. I defended Risto for a long time and believed he would develop, but at this point in his career I have accepted he's never going to be a top-pair Dman or the best Dman on the #2 pairing for a team with serious hopes of contending on the regular.

And at that point, do you want to pay him $5.4M? I can find guys who need protection for less money. Moreover, if some GM out there thinks Risto is anything more than what he is, then the return could easily be better than keeping him, completely independent of his contract.

Well, it's more like $11.4M since you can only bury a hair under $1M of a salary in the AHL. Anyway, there's no way that we're finding a taker for both Risto and Scandella without taking back money.

You complete me. I honestly don't expect RFK is going to have an opportunity to work with Risto. I'm tellin' ya: Dion Phaneuf. Risto has 424 NHL games played and makes $5.4M. It's time to let somebody else be disappointed. It's hard for me to believe anyone isn't at this point. Separately, a quick point on player usage: Yes, Risto has a really high percentage of "defensive zone starts" (just shy of 56%), but it's important to add some context to that particular statistic--it's simply a ratio of non-neutral zone shift starts that began with a faceoff. So yes, Housley put Risto out to start his shift in the defensive zone more than to start his shift in the offensive zone, but these are a pretty small minority of all shift starts. Risto had 1624 shifts in 2018-19. The breakdown is below: --Offensive zone: 203 --Defensive zone: 256 --Neutral zone: 303 --On-the-fly: 862 TLDR: Let's not get carried away with how much the zone start statistic can explain his poor metrics. About 84% of the time Risto is stepping onto the ice in a situation other than the defensive zone. I think this supports the idea that the quality of his own play has a lot more to do with how he gets trapped in his own end than anything the coach does.

There is no world in which we should have to take on Callahan to get Miller unless the only thing we're sending their way is a 7th round pick. I want Miller, and in many ways I think he's an ideal acquisition...but acquiring Callahan basically prevents us from adding another top-6 player this season.

Well, that's not entirely true. All of the evidence I'm familiar with suggests player usage has only a mild effect on things like corsi.