DarthEbriate

First and foremost, hopefully everything is OK with Eakin and his family. But strictly hockey speaking, it is good this last week that GM Sheevyn has learned from the now-obvious mistake of signing Eakin for 1.2M too high and 1 year too many. He did help on the PK and he did win faceoffs. But Lazar won the 3C and... dang it, I still wish we had Lazar even as a JAG.

Borgen has another week to win us over. Given the D available and some of the costs, Seattle should definitely look at some pricey top-pairing all-around guys and make up the difference with a cheap Borgen type. The reasons for exposing Risto: cap hit; good but not great player; Seattle will have oodles of defensemen to choose from who play various roles better than Ristolainen and in some cases for less money; Seattle is reportedly very big on analytics and Risto does not match those criteria; we've had rumors on Risto's trade value being pretty poor league-wide the last few years now, so Seattle isn't going to pick him and suddenly spin him for a 1st + anything. Scenarios: If you expose Risto and Miller, Seattle takes Miller to use the extra $2M elsewhere. Seattle can look at Risto and Miller as playing the same role, so while Ristolainen is better, there are other D options that are going make Ristolainen unncessary. If you expose Borgen and Miller, I think you have to offer a 3rd or 4th to get Seattle to take Miller over Borgen. Miller does have the upside as a PP2 guy and has that shot... but when you look at some of the other D options for Seattle, they don't need to pay that much money for a 3rd pairing guy. Now --- after exposing the veteran of the D-corp to expansion --- does that affect Ristolainen next season? Are we then forced to deal him at the trade deadline? Or can he use it as motivation to go have a great season with a new coach, a revitalized Eichel, and such?

Agreed on the bolding. Definitely no to Virtanen. And Holtby is done as well... it'd be like acquiring Hutton at twice the cost. Let Vancouver continue to make these poor deals (Myers, Roussel, Beagle). We have enough troubling contracts of our own without taking on more.

I wouldn't worry about placement. Even with the worst record in the league, the odds of successfully winning #1 in the draft lottery are approximate five-point-four to one. Whomever we pick should be able to contribute in 2022-23. This is where I'm at as well. The team is playing alright given the circumstances. Yes, Boston has exposed them a couple times... but they haven't folded in the 1st or 2nd periods. And if Ullmark were starting these games instead of UPL/Tokarski, we probably are looking at another win or even two along the way. But don't let that fool you... Granato should be fourth or fifth on the interview list depending on what happens with free-agent coaches around the league.

One thing about this Bruins team... they get in front of the net and then they locate the rebounds and put them back toward (not necessarily on net) but they get rebound shots well.

Wooohooo!

Wait... is he retiring now? Because there's only like 7 games left. That's like a Miller Retirement equivalent of a Miller Shutout. Which is actually pretty darn funny. Or is he announcing he will retire? At any rate, excellent goalie, apparently a good person around the community. And yes, they've been looking for his equivalent since. And at times trading away anyone who came close.

Yeah, but the final time he drew a penalty and then scored on the ensuing PP. Huh... um... Keep falling down, Reino!

Timely Reino!

This is where our entire team suffers. Asplund just had time to slaughter Fox. Didn't even touch him... and Fox was able to make an easy, uncontested pass, because he knew none of our forwards will finish a hard check. Fox should have been buried there. Just a height thing is all.

Tokarski would've given up a goal there.

If Seattle takes Bjork, do you re-sign Rieder to another low deal to be the speedy PK-er? Fox is a nice little rushing defenseman.

Shesterkin is saving the Rangers' bacon. And Bryson just screened UPL on a goal.... blergh

Alright -- lock S-foils in attack position. We're going to get the best from a team in the playoff hunt here in the 2nd.

Sort of... very much perimeter although we're outskating them to pucks thus far. Need to keep the pressure on.

UPL hasn't even played excellent hockey at the AHL level yet. It'd be criminal for him to be on the Sabres roster next season for anything short of multiple goalie injuries and a late-season call-up to get a preview to compete as a backup in 2022-23. He needs 50 more starts, minimum, before consideration for NHL backup time. COVID-shortened seasons, the creation of the taxi squad, and the loss of the ECHL threw this entire team's development of goalies completely out of a whack.

The cap is flat, but when it goes up, it's going to be like looking at a Death Star vs. a Starkiller Base. Nice. The TNT deal replaces the entirety of the NBC deal. ESPN is 400M of entirely new money. And as you point out, helmet ads are here to stay. Division names are silly, but profitable. A few more logos here and there. Plus Honda, Enterprise, and the advertisement revenues of both streaming and live TV. The continuing bump of new Vegas and Seattle revenue. And when the Olympics come back --- team USA might be really good, which will at least temporarily provide a spike in interest. I think we'll see the cap get over $100M/season by 2025-26. Once they get the debts of last year and this year paid off, it's going to get silly. At the end of its term, Skinner's contract will still be terrible, but not unmovable.

Please, please, please... someone make the respectable, analytics- and eye-test-driven case for protecting Okposo and Eakin. I want to be entertained today.

It also begs the question... why would LA give up all that high-potential, cheap talent to get when they have many more holes in the lineup? They just finished their tank. They have been working for years to get all the old (albeit Cup-winning) core and its reward contracts off the books. Dustin Brown, Jonathan Quick, and Drew Doughty are the only rough contracts remaining. Kopitar's is high, but fine. Adding Eichel makes them better, but it doesn't make them an immediate contender with all the other holes still to fill? Plus, LA's GM would never taken on another 10M salary without getting rid of Quick or Brown (or maybe Doughty). It'd be like if we went back in time 5 years. We've just tanked. Our lineup is garbage, but we have Eichel and we have Sam. And along comes Tampa Bay and says: "Hey, we'll trade you 8M/year Stamkos who's been injured a bunch already, but boy oh boy, can he shoot the puck. You know, when he's healthy. We want Eichel, Reinhart, and 2 more picks." But then go back to our post-tank garbage lineup. Put Stamkos on it. Great, it's better. Now take away $6M in additional salaries because it was near the cap, and then take away Jack and Sam. There are still gaping holes everywhere in the lineup. Stamkos and ROR are going to be good, but that's not a good roster, and worse -- what about the chunks of every season when Stamkos isn't on the ice?

There. I did it again. I turned off the game tab and ... y'all are yelling Samson. I'm gonna pull a Wedge. "I'm hit. I can't stay with you." Y'all go blow up the Death Star without me.

I'm endangering the mission, I shouldn't have come. Every time I come back to the game from the yard, I watch a Rangers goal. Meanwhile, I go away, and we score.

Perhaps not Scheifele level, but in those final 2 years of Eichel's deal (28-29 years old, still putting up 70+ points/season barring injury, lots of PP time) I think everything is trending toward a cap above 100M. A wave of players (many on bridges now, plus anyone who negotiates here during the flat cap should be doing Hall-like 1-year deals) is going to get paid. 10M will be the new 7M and we'll see 50 players with higher salaries than Eichel. The TV contract cash flood is coming. Heck, because it's the Reinhart thread, in 2 years if Reinhart puts up 70+ point seasons and... wham... he won't be the biggest name on UFA, but he could still get more than 10M because that'll simply be the going price for any first liner. It'll simply be the going rate for a guy like "Ryan Johansen" to pull an 8M guy from the current list.

Well... that was pretty. Bad for us, but that was awfully pretty.

My argument is not about 10M/year. It's the total cap. Eichel's currently at 12% of the cap, but once the cap starts going up, it's going to go way up. My guess is Eichel's contract is going to be in the 10% range by 2024-25, and likely even further when we get to 2025-26. We're headed for a very high cap (and still only 50 contracts, and very low AHL/ECHL contracts by comparison to what the top players are going to get).