pi2000

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.

who's in the cage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kosTQ4xXtOQ

Babcock is one of the game's most respected coaches by way of line combinations, match-ups and overall game strategy. The Red Wings won the Central 5 of his first 6 years with the team, putting up over 100 points in 8 of the 10 years he was with Detroit.

This is absolutely ridiculous..... The pads are up to his ears, and the arms, especially at the elbow are massive. The only reason they're that big is to stop pucks that otherwise would go by them. It will be fascinating to watch if they streamline the chest protectors and pants. Imagine all the goalies who are making a living simply because of their size and ability to play angles. With streamlined pads the emphasis may shift back to more quick, athletic goaltenders.... which traditionally means shorter in stature.

Agree 100%. IMO, the most important pieces of equipment to make smaller these days are chest protectors and pants. Bulky pants and tall/wide chest protectors are ideal for butterfly goalies, and a big reason all goalies are now butterfly style. The only problem is how to regulate this. What's going to stop a 5'11 goalie from wearing a chest protector designed for somebody who is 6'6? Maybe the league has to approve all goalie equipment on a per player basis?

Moulson. Invisible.

Yes, the schedule is terrible this year. Next week they play DAL, STL ,DAL then STL again, then NSH, CAR and NSH again. wat

I think it would be somewhat underwhelming. I could see it become useful when advanced stats are available for display by the viewer, eg time on ice, hits, shots, etc... with 4k and upcoming 8k, the size of displays will grow ever larger, giving more screen real estate for statisitcal overlays etc.... it's coming.

Chips in pucks and skates, sensors on the goal line and blue line for automating goals and offsides. How cool would it be if the posts on the net lit up, or some other automated notification (goal horn?) when the sensors detect a goal. There is no good reason this couldn't be done tomorrow. Think back to the Cup winning goal by Patrick Kane vs the Flyers. Nobody new what was going on for a few minutes except Kane. That needs to be fixed yesterday.

This is great. Maybe we can trade them a traditional gritty defenseman like Mike Weber for Tyson Barrie.

"Eichel Eichel motorcycle!" would be an improvement over "Yeichel"

Losing becomes somewhat tolerable when you're not expected to win. They have much more talent now than they did the past 2 season, so losing is not tolerated... not just because they "decided" they weren't going to lose.

All the taller athletic kids in NA are playing football or basketball, two sports you can't play competitively if you're a club hockey player as a kid/teenager.

If he continues to play well in Lehner's abscence he'll be a very attractive piece to add to a larger deal for somebody like a Tyson Barrie (pending RFA). Murray has too much invested in Lehner who is only 2 years older than Ullmark.

I grew up playing in the 80's and 90's,high school through college and a year of minor league in florida... I still play competitive mens league and it's much much more difficult to score 1-on-1 vs the goalie simply because of the size of their equipment. It used to be that if the goalie was butterfly style you could shoot up top. If he was stand up, shoot 5 hole or under the blocker/glove. These days, every goalie is putting up high 900 sv % because all they have to do is learn how to cover angles as a butterfly goalie. You don't need to be as athletic as the top goaltenders were in the 80s and early 90s. Just wear massive gear and hope the puck hits you vs tracking the puck and stretching out to make saves. The giant chest protectors take away so much of the top of the net, especially with bigger goalies. Just look at how bad it's gotten.... Is all that necessary? The size of those arms and the height above the neck line isn't for protection, it's to take away space. Get rid of that stuff, make it more form fitting and give them tighter jerseys. This will open up way more of the top the net. If all you do is increase size of the nets the goalies are gonna end up looking like this.... The modern NHL has become a game of just throwing pucks at the net through a crowd and hope it hits something or goes in by chance. That's not going to make the game more popular. In the 80s and 90s you had guys flying up and down the ice end to end shooting and scoring for all areas of the ice. Now it's just, dump in, retrieve puck, send to the point throw at the net, wash rinse repeat.... it's not as fun to watch as a fan. If you make the goalie smaller by reducing the size of ALL their equipment, then you have better shooting %'s from other areas of the ice and the game changes drastically.

It's all about that PDO.

The pads can be the same thickness, they just need to fit properly and not make a 160lb player look like he's 325lbs. This is just ridiculous.... his pads are up to his ears. ..and look at how oversized Bernier's goal pants are.... The padding can be nice and thick, but make the pants and chest protector more form fitting so it's not sticking up 6 inches above their neck line.

As far as their poor shooting % goes... the stat you want to look at is PDO. Over the season, PDO's gravitate toward 100, meaning your team shooting percentage is generally on par with your opponents shooting %. Last season the team with the worst PDO was CAR at 97.1%, the best was NYR at 101.7%.. not much variance. BUF was 8th from the bottom at 99.5%. So far this season, BUF is 2nd worst at 93.5% even though they have more offensive talent than they did last season. What does this mean? As we progress through the season, that number will self-correct, meaning we'll start seeing more pucks go in and fewer against, which will translate to more wins..... eventually? Why would the players union fight it? Don't they want to score more goals as well (make more $ for their players)? I could see where the goalies might complain, but unless they have their own union, they're only a small % of the players.

Buffalo is 4th worst in the league with a -10 goal differential through 10 games. After the past few years we're all familiar with how that works itself out in the standings.... folks, we're headed for a bottom 5 finish, at best bottom 10. And I'm OK with it because they're getting better.