Curt

I know that Kulich doesn’t play for the USDP. Neither Crusader or I said USDP. Crusader mentioned that he is playing great right now, and he might be a top 10 pick. I haven’t watched him either. Looks like he can really score.

No, Kulich. What’s your opinion of him?

9-10? Haven’t seen him that high anywhere. I think he is maybe more of a target at 16.

I think it would be perfectly fine to draft him at 9-10. I like him a lot.

It only applies to players who are also under contract with an SHL team. I would think that players with NHL aspersions will be less willing to sign multi year deals with their SHL clubs. I also wonder if NHL teams will be able to “buy out” existing SHL contracts in order to bring a player over to the AHL.

I don’t know about the term muscle bound, but Is it not true that if you do a lot of heavy weight training, without emphasizing flexibility enough, you can lose flexibility and become more injury prone? I wasn’t alive in the 70’s, but I’ve definitely heard people talk about this. Eichel is someone who was doing serious weight training from a young age, 14-15 I believe, well before he was in the NHL. Is it not possible that some early years at least he was lifting too heavy and/or not working enough on flexibility and that has made him prone to some types of injury?

Just a note on this. It’s not the team, but the media members in the market who nominate the players. Each media group nominates one player.

I think there are tangible differences in the way he is playing. I don’t think it’s just the move to C. Moving from W to C doesn’t transform a 15 goal, 30 pt player into a 35-40 goal, 65-70 pt player

Pretty much, that’s where he is generally ranked, but if a guy is “consensus” ranked at 14 and you draft him at 10, whoopdy doo, what’s the difference? If it’s an organizational fit, then it’s not even an overdraft.

It’s nice to know. Along with him bothering to appear as a guest on Buffalo Sabres fan podcast and some other general comments that he has made, I’m not worried about him signing next offseason. Its also nice to know that the organization is reaching out to make available opportunities like this to build relationships with their prospects. For the individual players/people I’m sure that it makes a world of difference.

I think that Cutter Gauthier should be in the running for consideration at 9/10/11. Size and physicality at 6-3 190, intensity, speed, a great shot, pretty good playmaking too. I think it’s a player profile that Buffalo needs to add more of. I just see a lot of attributes that say future NHL goal scoring power forward.

They 3 examples of early career highs should come with a disclaimer. (1) they were on an offensive juggernaut of a team those couple years (2) they occurred in a window of time where NHL scoring was way way up for 2-3 years because they told the refs to call more penalties

Thanks for info on the Timmy Ho’s. I saw something different. I wasn’t really trying to belittle drunk driving. I did call it stupid and inexcusable. I was just adding context to the incident. As far as drunk driving accidents go, it’s one of the funnier ones. Most aren’t.

Isn’t kind of interesting that looking at all 19 yr old AHL seasons ever, 4 of the top 9 PPG seasons are from this season?

No one from the past 30. That’s probably a good sign.

Definitely some caution is warranted until we see how he follows this up. All my stuff was in response to Wookiee saying that this is a lot like what Karlsson did. Karlsson shooting over 23% is a lot different from Thompson shooting 15%. To maintain anything anywhere near 23%, that’s elite elite scorer territory, and anyone should have known that Karlsson wasn’t that level. But lots of good, not elite, players are able to maintain shooting %’s in the neighborhood of what Thompson is doing this season.

I get what you are saying, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Thompson’s sh% decreases next season. Yeah, player shooting percentages are going to vary, it’s the nature of the beast, it doesn’t mean that it’s a fluke. Thompson might shoot 15% this season, 12% next season, 8%, 13%, 17%......... However, there are plenty of players who maintain a very high shooting percentage over a large period of time. Over the past 5 seasons, there are 40 players who have played over 200 games and over that time period averaged a sh% higher than what Thompson has this season. If you knock it down to a lesser but still high % of 13%, there are literally 100 players who have averaged that over the past 5 seasons. Its not just the elite of the elite players who are able to maintain shooting percentages in that range. Lots of very good but not elite players are able to do it. In addition to this, you can look at Thompson’s previous lower sh%’s, but you also need to look at the player. To my eyes, Thompson is not playing the same way he did in previous seasons but just getting lucky this year. There have been real changes in his skill set that are resulting in this higher sh%. The way he is using his shot, the better positions that he is getting himself into, the more dangerous situations that he is creating and benefitting from his teammates creating. He is a different player. I think that he will be able to maintain a fairly high sh% going forward. I think he will probably average over 12% for the rest of his career.

That was obviously a stupid inexcusable incident, but calling it a drunk driving accident is pretty funny in a misleading kind of way. It’s technically true, but what happened was the fancy classic truck was parked at the Timmy Ho’s and then accidentally put into drive instead of reverse and drove the 3ft into the glass wall, breaking one glass pane. I feel like most people think he lost control of his vehicle going down the road and smashed into the side of a building. Also, there are no Tim Horton’s west of Michigan or south of Virginia.

I know that it seems most everyone is taking it as a given, but are we really 100% sure that Peterka is going to start next season in the NHL? I know it’s a possibility, but I’m not convinced it’s a certainty.

It goes like this: 32 - Cup winner 31 - Cup finals loser 30 - Losing conference finalist w/better record 29 - Losing conference finalist w/worse record 17-28 - arranged by regular season standings, with division winners picking later Only the conference finals and cup finals impact draft order. The rest of the playoff results don’t factor into it.

Matthews scored his 60th tonight. Krieder has 52 goals!?!? and 77 points, at age 30, when his previous career highs were 28 and 53!!! What the heck is that?

I honestly don’t understand the hostility. I was polite and I thought my questions were reasonable. It seems that you invented a new set of terminology for categorizing NHL defensemen; A players and B players. I apologize if this is not something brand new, if it’s something that I should already been familiar with, but did you not expect questions when you logged in and just started calling guys A players and B players? I’m not asking questions to screw with you. I’m asking questions because I’ve never seen anyone use these terms before and I’d like to understand exactly what they mean.

I sincerely am not screwing with you. I am just asking a couple simple questions in good faith to try to gain an understanding of what you are talking about. If I had to guess right now, it seems that the A guy is just the more offensive of the pair and the B guy is the more defensive. Is it anything more than that?

I would agree with that, everyone would, but it doesn’t help me to understand anything. It would help me to understand what you mean with the A/B thing if you would answer the questions that I asked above. Do your A/B designations apply only to which player is better at zone exits?

Leaves me with more questions than answers. An “A” player is more active than a “B” player in what areas of the game? A “B” player defers to the “A” player in what areas of the game?