pi2000

Most defenseman should be able to do that. We're so used to seeing slugs like Weber, Gorges and Franson, that anytime a D-man catches someone from behind, we're flabbergasted. Rasmus is playing well, still room to improve... some of his decisions in the offensive zone seem a bit rushed... doesn't hold the puck very long. I'd like to see him use more patience and hang on to it a bit longer. That will come with experience. I just don't see him as a PP guy either. Need a more offensively minded guy like TYSON BARRIE to QB the power play.

He's improved and is playing well. The big concern for me was his ability to stay on his skates and win battles along the wall. He's progressed nicely in those areas, still room to improve, but he's getting there. As long as he's getting top-6 minutes he should stay on the big club.

wait a sec. the NWHL has an all-star game? SO basically half of each team makes the all-star team?

He only played 7 games in Nov, not a huge sample size. and he had that one really really really really bad game tho where he gave up 7 goals on 26 shots at the end of Oct. He's been very good since that game tho. Ullmark still has a better sv% tho.

We can blame Tim Murray for this mess. He scouts all these guys. The fact that he felt the need to trade a 1st rnd pick for Lehner while Ullmark is waiting in the wings, tells me he has no eye for goaltenders. How he could he not see the potential in Ullmark? Sure he's coming off an injury and has never played an NHL game, but it would've been nice to still have the 1st round pick to fill another spot and go out and get a cheaper veteran guy to play net for a season or two at worst.

Consider there are infinite parallel universes. In at least one of those universes, tonight's game heads to a shootout tied 0-0, and nobody scores in the shootout..... ever. I believe it's highly likely that's the universe we live in. BTW, in one of those universes Gary Bettman is still conducting the draft lottery. Fortunately we don't live in that one.

It's due to the rise of the tall goalie. Tall goalies are effective because the size of their upper body equipment takes away the top the net allowing taller, slower moving goaltenders to make positional vs reactionary saves. The solution is simple... reduce the size of their equipment (namely chest/arms pads, make the gloves and blocker smaller by removing the "cheater" part of the pads). This will force goalies to make reactionary saves vs just butterflying on their knees at the correct angle to take away 97% of the net. As a result, taller, slower goaltenders will become less popular. One misconception is that the tall goalie is more athletic these days. The fact is that there have ALWAYS been tall goaltenders... they just haven't been very good because with appropriately sized equipment they were forced to make more reactionary saves, so smaller quicker athletes were preferred between the pipes.

I get that the guy was laying on top of him, but there were billions of zombies swarming over them. The dead guys body was laying diagonal across Glenn's, there's no way in hell Glenn could've survived that without getting bit at least once in the head or other extremities. Ruined the show IMO.

Considering where they were just last season, this is an improvement. I will say this. Coach Bylsma needs to leave some line combinations alone for a bit. O'Reilly with Ennis and Moulson were generating chances, as was Eichel with Kane and Reinhart. Keep those lines together for 10 games or so before pulling the plug.

Let's say Reinhart doesn't score that goal, the play continues and DAL scores a shorthanded goal. Can Buffalo challenge that they themselves were offsides earlier during the play and the DAL goal should not count? If not, I have a problem with it.

The wrist pad on the catching glove is 3-4 times the actual width of the goalies wrist. The arm pads are the same, 3-4 times the width of the arm, and the chest protectors stick up to ear level. That has nothing to do with protecting the goaltender. I understand you need the equipment to be larger than the person wearing it so they have some flexibility, but this is just too much.

I don't care what hand he is. The style this team plays is north and south, high speed, win puck races, D joins the offense on the attack. I'm sorry but Gorges, Weber, and Franson simply are not fast enough for this style of play. Watch how often the opposing team dumps a puck into any of those 3 players corner and then easily wins the foot race to the puck. It's a big sore spot. Barrie is lightning on skates and offensively aggressive, he's a perfect defenseman for this system.

I disagree. Large goalies are en vogue because larger upper body equipment means they can just take away angles in the butterfly position without having to move. Taking away the large upper body equipment will force them to make reactionary (instead of positional) saves in the butterfly position. That said, I don't expect all tall goalies to go away... there will be some who are athletic enough to make reactionary saves and continue to perform at a high level. HOwever, I do expect the average height of goaltenders to come back down by a few inches to where it was in the mid-90s. Does all these mean scoring will go up? Initially that would be the case, but as goaltenders evolve, it will even out. It's a cycle of offense vs defense that all sports go through at some point. RIght now goaltenders have the upper hand by a wide margin. Yep. Look at how high the pads are above the knee. When facing butterfly goalies as a youth in the 80's and 90's, we were taught to shoot high or five-hole on butterfly goalies. They took away the five-hole with the overlapping pads above the knee, and then took away the top of the net with massive chest protectors and oversized gloves. As such, the league has evolved into a game of getting the puck back to the point, screen the goalie and hope something finds the net.... as the primary way to score is by blocking the goalies vision instead of straight up beating him with an open shot. Effective, but not very sexy.

I remember back in the 70's and 80's, the larger goaltenders were not quick enough to be effective. In the 90's and 00's, goalie equipment grew larger and larger and larger to the insanity it is today. Larger equipment has allowed the taller goaltenders to compensate for their lack of quickness by simply covering more of the net, notably in the butterfly. Butterfly technique wasn't popular in the 70's and 80's because if you went down on your knees, then entire top the net was open to shoot at. So they made chest protectors, gloves, and blockers bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger to take away the top of the net. This allowed taller goalies to flourish in the butterfly... which is where we're at today. Take away the larger chest protectors and shrink the other equipment back down and the taller goaltenders no longer have as much of an advantage.... we'll go back to shorter quicker, more athletic goaltenders. I'd much rather watch a Grant Fuhr doing the splits than a Ben Bishop motionless on his knees hoping the puck hits him.

Ennis and Ullmark for Barrie seems about right. A 1st, Girgensons and Pysyk for Duchene is probably not enough to get it done.

I've experienced blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Earthquakes are by far the most frightening... just the suddenness and no where to hide from it. Without warning the ground beneath your feet is rolling and everything is shaking, you don't know if or when it will stop. The world as you know it seems to be disintegrating before your eyes. I've been near tornadoes, but not in the direct path, in those cases I would imagine it would be just as terrifying as an earthquake if you can't get away from it. Was stuck in the direct path of a hurricane and while not as terrifying, the duration of the event was most troubling. The eye passed over, then wind starts up again in the opposite direction snapping everything in half as everything is bent back the other way. It lasted about 10 hours. Destroyed the windshield on my car, all the shelters were full, was on vacation camping. Tent was gone, only shredded pieces of it left with some camping boxes inside holding it down. Spent the entire day in my car. Parked near a beach as anywhere else had too much debris flying around. The wind literally pushed the car across the parking lot while it was parked. Was in my early 20's so I didn't feel like my life was in danger. If that happened now, I'd myself.

my prediction... Lehner comes back, gets the starting job back right away and they send Ullmark to Roch to start every game. Lehner starts slow, but comes on in late Jan and has success to the end of the season. Ullmark stays in Roch for the remainder of the season, winning rookie of the year honors. Ullmarks name comes up as a key piece in trade talks as part of a larger deal (Ennis, Pysyk, Girgensons, Ullmark, 1st) for Matt Duchene and Tyson Barrie.

I think it's more that Ted Nolan and his staff were just really really bad, moreso than Bylsma and his staff being one of the best in the league.

I had a better relationship with the sport when there was more fighting... 80's and early 90's hockey was the best. Not enough raw emotion in today's game. It's more fun watching teams play that have a deep down hatred for each other, instead of this fist bump after a fight . These days, instead of looking forward to the heavyweights squaring off we get to watch AHL level talent dump the puck in to the other teams zone and setup a neutral zone trap.... how exciting!!!

Right, a fully electronic system, while possible, would be prohibitively expensive at this present time. A less expensive method would be a system similar to the HawkEye in tennis. Keep the same challenge rule in tact, but use the hawkeye system for speeding up the review. Hawkeye uses cameras positioned at the top of the stadium to triangulate the exact position of the ball. Could this work in hockey? Maybe? It would like be a much cheaper solution than planting chips in pucks with trackpads under the ice, etc...

Gave my 11-y/o son a red bull before his peewee game Sunday. I told him Jack Eichel drinks it before games. He played his best game of the season, he was flying up and down the ice. That said, I did not give my 9 y/o an energy drink before his 7am game, and he was terribly sluggish (maybe i should've spiked his water bottle?). Back in the early 90's when I played in college, energy drinks weren't a thing. We were just naturally jacked up for games, it didn't seem like we needed any extra boost. Some guys drank coffee a few hours before, but that was it. Even at the pro-level (I played one season in Florida), it wasn't a thing. When I moved to California and transitioned from hockey to triathlon, I did use plenty of caffeine enhanced energy gels, and that did make a difference, although once you start taking them, you need to keep up the intake so you don't crash. It worked well for shorter sprint/olympic distance races, but there was less of a benefit when doing the ironman distance events. There's also some studies that show too much caffeine can dehydrate your body leading to cramping and so forth, so it was important to monitor electrolyte intake (salt tablets, etc..) as well. These days if I have caffeine after noon, I'll have trouble fall asleep so I stick to decaf or half-calf for the most part.

Ullmark is playing well, but he's too scrambly and floppy. That's just part of being a young goaltender, he needs to be playing a ton and he can do that in Roch while he fine tunes his game. It's just a matter of time before he lays an egg at the NHL level and you don't need to crush his confidence while he's young.

I have no doubt such a system could be built quite easily with readily available technology. Put a chip in puck with a perimeter sensor to detect when the puck has FULLY crossed the blue line. You could either build cameras into the boards along the blue line for detection, or better yet just inlay an electronic track pad under the ice. Put chips in the players skate chassis. The blade is conductive, so that makes it easy to detect when blade #2 on the player without the puck has completely crossed the line. There are much smarter people than I who can work out all the details, but there's not doubt it's do-able... Why not inlay a tracking pad under the entire ice surface, that way you can instantly track the puck anywhere on the ice. Would it be expensive? Probably, but we need to start somewhere.

We have the technology to electronically detect offsides. This would kill all these plays before they happen.

Caffeine is just a gateway drug. Just wait until he gets the good stuff.