Curt

It’s not bad. Late 1st and Calen Addison for 3.5 years (4 playoffs) of Zucker at a reasonable price. Galchenyuk is probably going to play half of a lost season for Minny then walk. He is FA. He isn’t actually adding much value here.

He can reliably carry it through the neutral zone and enter the offensive zone with possession. That’s valuable and something that only 2-3 other players on the roster can do as well as him. He doesn’t often turn that into a good scoring chance because he just isn’t that good. If he could, he would be a 1st line player, a star. Once in a while he can, but not often. That’s why I say he is a good puck carrier for a 3rd line or on a top-6 line with two very good players. 3rd liners are imperfect, but useful players. Johansson is useful, but he isn’t great.

Those two guys have been in trade rumors forever. Wouldn’t have minded if Zucker ended up a Sabre. Galchenyuk, eh, not do positive about.

Agree. Johansson is a nice example. As a 2C, he’s going to be disappointing more often than not, but he can help a team create offense and I think he is a great guy to be a play driver on a 3rd line, or the 3rd best player on a top-6 line that needs some puck carrying/playmaking ability.

Modern or old time, it doesn’t matter. They are adequate at neither.

Under the current CBA rules, any 18-19 year old player who doesn’t play at least 10 NHL games has their ELC “slide” by a year. So if a 19 year old player is signed, but doesn’t play in the NHL, it doesn’t matter if he is in the AHL or CHL, his ELC doesn’t have a year burned off of it.

It shouldn’t affect how young player contracts are handled. Just because the player becomes AHL eligible doesn’t mean that they automatically need to sign their ELC. The CHL isn’t going to turn away good players. They’ll fight to keep them. They are running a business after all.

No team gets its best results every game. Between qulaity of competition, luck, and travel schedules, a team will show better some days than others. Im not excusing lackluster, uninspired play, but I truly believe that the team lacks the talent to consistently put forward playoff team type performances.

This whole post was very nice and well done. Thank you for the effort.

They don’t have enough forward or goalie talent to be a good team. That’s why they often are not good enough. They can be good enough against teams playing poorly or when they get a little lucky, or when they have an especially good game, but they are not consistently good enough because they lack the type of talent you would expect a playoff team to have.

I’m not being argumentative. It’s not so simple as you say. Everyone seems to have their own definition for what “driving” means. By your definition, there are probably only 30 in the entire NHL. Others have different definitions in mind when they use the phrase.

I watched the play about ten times. The pass went right through Jacks feet. He was right there, but a little late on the back check. Dahlin was caught 2 on 1 down low.

And Botterill doesn’t even own a watch, which is why it’s taking him so long to get a C.

Ok, I was just telling you what the conversation was. The “driving a line” conversation is a related and a relevant conversation for sure. I’ll ask this, What does “driving a line” mean to you? What’s the definition? How can I tell if Reinhart is a “driver” or not? I can’t look at a roster a separate it out into “drivers” and “passengers”. Is that really how hockey works? Lines with “drivers” carrying “passengers” to production? Or is it generally players, none of who are perfect, with different skills, working together to get things done?

The statement that sparked off the conversation was “I dont like him much, mostly because he cant do ***** without Jack.“ So really, that’s what Liger was saying he could disprove. Not anything about Reinhart being able to drive a line while playing C and being saddled with 4th line quality line mates. To me, the question shouldn’t be, “can we put Reinhart with Sheary and Larsson level players and get top 6 level production?” I think everyone would assume the answer is no. Only the very Elite players in the game can raise up the level of line mates like that. The question should be “can we put Skinner-Johansson-Reinhart out there and create a capable 2nd scoring line to go with Olofsson-Eichel-Sheary/Vesey/whoever?” I think that’s a very relevant and unanswered question that we don’t have enough information on.

Ok, but then you are really just looking at how Reinhart did when trying to play 3C with horrible wingers. I think that’s the only time he has been away from both Eichel and O’Reilly. I think I already know what those numbers are going to look like, but why not. Understand what you are looking at though.

I mean sure, Sam didn’t do anything, but it honestly probably was someone else’s area. If Sam is over on that side, that leaves zero Sabres on the right side of the ice. Plus the pass to Getzlaf went right through Ike’s legs and also Risto was standing there watching as well (closer to the play than Reino) as Getzlaf came down the wing, received the nice pass and buried it. It was actually a really quick play and a really nice pass. Eichel or Risto is the guy who should have been backchecking faster so the guy down low wasn’t totally free to make that pass.

I didn’t watch. Was Johansson that bad? I didn’t expect much from him but was hoping I would be surprised. Seems like the same old story. Need a couple better forwards and better goaltending. Am I right?

I think it pure loyalty to the CHL system’s finances. Even if the AHL age limit was abolished, NHL teams would still have the option of returning players to the CHL if they thought that was best. So, at the heart of it, opposition to lifting the age restrictions is not about doing what’s best for the players. NHL teams would still be able to put players in whatever situation they thought was best.

Galchenyuk isn’t really a C though. He has been tried there time and time again, but hasn’t really every succeeded there. Might as well try Reinhart there.

I totally understand this concern, but there are D his size who are able to play top-4 and be successful in the playoffs. Sami Vatanen, Jared Spurgeon, Ryan Ellis, Torey Krug, Kris Russell. I honestly think it’s more likely that Pilot is a guy you want playing 17:00-19:00 than someone you want playing 20:00+, but I think he can be a useful NHL player.

Kane, Bogo, Kasdorf for Myers, Stafford, Armia, Lemieux, 1st (Roslovic) -So we could have Roslovic 3C/W and Armia big depth scoring W, maybe have Myers or traded him in a different deal. Lemieux and Stafford were on the way out but we could have gotten something else for them. We wouldn’t have Bogo or Ryan Johnson. Lehner for a mid 1st was a bad idea I thought. -It ended up being Connor White for Ottawa (meh) but there were several good players taken in that area of that deep draft. Ilya Samsonov, Boeser, Konecny, Chabot, Kyle Connor, Barzal were all taken just before and after. The ROR trade I actually liked to give Eichel some cover. ROR and Jamie McGinn for Zadorov, Grigorenko, JT Compher, a 2nd. Braden McNabb and two 2nds for Deslauriers and Fasching was terrible terrible. -McNabb could have been a pretty good player for Buffalo plus two speculative 2nds. It was just a lot of “win now” moves that didn’t work out for a team that wasn’t actually ready to win now.

This is great. See right here. Marchand’s laziness cost his team the Stanley Cup! What? He couldn’t play for another 15 seconds? Inexcusable! That bull would never fly on a real team. What a joke. In all seriousness. Sometimes players just do dumb things. Marchand has done many strange or boneheaded things that hurt his team over the years. Some of which I think he has learned from. He is still a great player though.

This is great. See right here. Marchand’s laziness cost his team the Stanley Cup! What? He couldn’t play for another 15 seconds? Inexcusable! That bull would never fly on a real team. What a joke. In all seriousness. Sometimes players just do dumb things. Marchand has done many strange or boneheaded things that hurt his team over the years. Some of which I think he has learned from. He is still a great player though.

You mean what was traded? Or who were possible draft selections? Yeah, I’ll admit that I’m sure there were a variety of different paths to building a good team, both tanking and not tanking. I just think if you ARE going to tank, you really need to use most of those picks to build back up organizational depth. Not that you can’t make ANY moves to bring in veterans, but you need to be more selective than GMTM was. If you couldn’t find the right guys all in a 6 month period (what he tried to do) then that’s ok. It’s a rebuild. If it takes 2 yrs to carefully find the 4-5 good young veterans you want to bring in, that’s ok. The team doesn’t have to make a playoff push immediately. To say they shouldn’t have tanked, is to say it’s ok if we didn’t get one of McEichel. I think that would have been ok. There are other, less demoralizing ways to build a team.