Thorny

Crosby is a Selke level defensive player and McDavid stinks on D i am the guy defending McDavid in the thread, too. He doesn’t / didn’t fold and he may be the most talented player to ever play the game he’s got a ways to go to catch Sid in terms of greatness though, and Sid’s dominance 200 foot is a big part of what led to his accomplishments Nah, Crosby is assuredly “that guy” if he doesn’t make a difference no one does

All leagues have fans that do that. Greatness breads envy etc etc LeBron is loved, and hated Crosby.

It’s interesting cause we absolutely have a differing analysis of how he’s perceived. To me, and I’ve heard others mention this, since perhaps the time of his excellent world championships performance for Canada ~ a decade ago he’s seen much more in the all-around sense and pigeonholed less so as a dirty agitator with ability. I don’t seem him getting targeted by the refs at all(his penalty count certainly doesn’t reflect that) and he still takes his cheap shots Here’s an uncalled slew-foot dangerously close to the boards from 2 years ago

He absolutely gets away with FAR FAR more than he used to, the narrative absolutely changed on Marchand over the years a) aptitude B) his vet leadership / perceived vet leadership

I know there’s a huge disconnect with Dahlin B/c hardly anyone wants him to be captain. Have you seen how many penalties the dude takes? A letter on his chest..anything thst aids his relationship with the officials is what we want Dahlin needs the C. I’m sorry for tooting my own horn here but I made this point before and it didn’t gain any traction and forgive me but I think it’s the most salient factor re: picking a captain so I’m making it again he needs to be able to get away with more dirty stuff: because he will seize the opportunity if available I guarantee you that “the officials hate the sabres” - you need to actively curry said favour.

I’m ok if you remove your “thanks” On that @dudacek as I added a somewhat egregious shot at Krebs just as you reacted. I know you value his defensive output My points stands tho

Why Krebs and not Dahlin? Because Krebs is a small little agitator who we expect nothing of? Dahlin’s actual “grit” output far exceeds most players on the team. It’s like, if you have skill, and display it, that actively counts against the physicality you show. Krebs provides no aptitude of note, offensively, defensively or otherwise, other than a piece of paper that states who he was traded for, but he smiles in scrums after the whistle so he’s cool Dahlin has been a dickish, borderline dirty at times MFER on that ice for several years now. Even I’ve noticed that and I watch half as much

Sounds just like that. It sounds like they tried to narrow down the issues to as specific a target as hypothetically possible, the sort of “fix this one solitary issue and the tide of that change will raise all boats” line of thought we see proposed a lot around here. It seems like pretty much everything dudacek mentioned can be covered by turning over the one stone of finding a tough, depth centre. Essentially swapping the Mittelstadt fit, and running it back.

Thank you lol

I think that’s certainly valid, my opinion on it has changed significantly since I was a kid, it’s just difficult to parse how much of that is me changing and how much is, to your point, the league. That it made way more sense before seems plausible to me

It should be banned cause it’s asinine. It’s the only (non combat) sport where it’s essentially legal/tolerated/encouraged to..not play the game in question but rather to remove some of your equipment and assault eachother. Safety issue is whatever as it’s their choice..it’s just stupid. Feels like overcompensation. Small man syndrome It’s sort of embarrassing

So the priority is toughness? Old school coach brought back, old school philosophy? I admitted at the time the hire was in large part an attempt to invigorate the fan base (a very successful one at that, I found it exciting), but…is..is that all there is to it?

This is what we need to hope for. If we move on from him we should be getting a player who has value in return Simply creating space for a rookie would set the team back on ice

Kevyn Adams, after dealing his 3rd leading goal scorer and top penalty drawer for a cleaner cap sheet

“Winning” trades is the province of those who don’t win on the ice - the idea that “winning” a trade even matters relative to other markers where said trade is concerned is a fallacy borne from years of rebuilding On the ice you compete against an opponent, zero sum game. In a trade, it’s not about a value competition between a solitary one of your competitors, in a vacuum - that’ll get you nowhere - it’s about improving your team from the trade overall as your competition is with not your trade partner but *the body of league teams as a whole* As you said, Florida won’t care because they’ve already “won” by any principle they’d actually care to measure by

Only prediction here is we make all 8 picks since the 2021 draft Adams has selected 11, 11, and 8 players. 30 as opposed to the regularly scheduled 21. He doesn’t really move draft picks and if we start the day with 8 we’ll make 8 picks

I’ll add that those players might be better elsewhere but that’s a reflection of those players continuing along the growth and development track we could already well identify while they were here

It would be better had they not been in the position they needed to, or rather, felt they needed to, move those players. The returns themselves are ok to reasonable.

But he folds

I suppose my distinction here is that your post leaves the door open to, should we have another inactive offseason, write the offseason off as “well it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway” if we see something similar to last year re: the core, during the season. This is a tact I see used around here a lot, even if not by you, so I feel the distinction has merit and should be raised: “wouldn’t have mattered if KA brought in a goalie…our PP was too weak”…”we wouldn’t have won last year even with a more proactive offseason if that’s what we were going to get from Tage and Cozens”.. I don’t believe these things to be independent events, nor those types of statements accurate. I do believe a lot of what we will see from the core depends on the approach KA takes this offseason, tangibly but mostly mentally. So, in the hypothetical situation our core underperforms after a generally lacklustre offseason, we’d be left wondering how that core might have performed with a better offseason, not talking about how offseason additions wouldn’t have mattered because of what we got from the core. too fluid and dependent

Happy Father’s Day to my Dad, the reason I’m a fan

Absolutely disagree After what we heard from Kevyn Adams about the complacency in the locker room last year, a reflection of their GM’s offseason, it’s exceptionally easy to see that we could reasonably expect more of the same reflection should the GM yet again fail to be proactive. You have it backwards. It’s not “we won’t be good regardless unless the guys here are better” its ”the guys here aren’t going to be good enough unless they are adequately complemented by outside addition this offseason” The additions are important both to aid the overall talent level, but to facilitate the talent we have both literally, and especially especially mentally I can’t for the life of me square this opinion that Adams was right to address culture, yet the complete ignoring of it now as far as what they take from how he operates

Maybe higher first rounders? One thing you find is most teams are made up of mostly first rounders. Nature of the draft/league