thesportsbuff

as happy as I am to have Jason canned, i really don't have much faith that his successor will fair any better. i would have loved to have gotten a chance to see Jack Eichel carry this team through a playoff run, even in one of the stupidest playoff formats of all time. but, as far as the "if they played one more game thing", while true, i look no further than the 6 losses in a row prior to the washington game that ended up being the last game.

Hello friends, long time no see! I'm looking to purchase or potentially trade for an authentic Eichel 50th Anniversary jersey. I ordered a Dahlin upon release but found myself wishing I had gotten Eichel. I am a bit of an Eichel collector and would love to add his 50th jersey. I could buy outright or trade my Dahlin (never worn) and a few bucks. PM me if interested!

Great trade and great price. Skinner's name has been out there all summer and the idea never really interested me that much given his upcoming UFA status, but how can you not be ecstatic to get him for a reasonable price? And the fact he waived his NMC to come here gives me optimism that he may sign long term. I was not thrilled with the O'Reilly trade at the time, but this off-sets that in a big way if Skinner re-signs. Skinner has a much higher ceiling offensively and should easily replace Ryan's offensive output, while the depth created in the previous trade makes our bottom six NHL-calibre. It all makes a lot more sense now. I wonder if the timelines overlap. Did Botterill make the O'Reilly trade knowing there was a decent chance he could land Skinner? Or was Skinner just an opportunity that arose later that he couldn't pass up.

And they saw how well that worked out for them with the Hoffman trade. they embarrassed themselves. they owe it to their fans to get out of their own way on this one. take the best offer available, regardless of his destination. but, i do agree, it is an extremely unlikely scenario.

i posted it in another thread, but i would trade all three of our 2019 first rounders for Karlsson (w/ extension). i could throw in a prospect or two as well, but not any of the NHL-ready or borderline NHL-ready guys. I would lottery protect our own pick. For Ottawa, they have no first round pick of their own and are clearly in rebuild mode. How could they say no to three first round picks in the upcoming draft (potentially)? it would be a nice kickstart to their rebuild. I keep hearing the 2019 draft is "deep." I can't verify that, as I've only followed Hughes, but if it is indeed viewed as a deep draft class then that might be enticing to them. i don't think i could put together a offer where we take bobby ryan back. if that is the demand, i guess i move on to panarin.

I will always remember him fondly. It's easy to say in retrospect that he made terrible moves and ruined the team, but I loved his aggressive nature. I think he had the team on the right path. I still feel he should have been given another year to fix things -- and I wonder what happened that day. We were all expecting Bylsma to be fired, but not many truly expected Murray to be let go too. I still wonder if he took the fall b/c of an ultimatum to fire Bylsma that he didn't agree with. Maybe we'll never know. But I think when you are hired as the GM to lead a tank job -- and ownership is clearly on board with your plan -- you need to be given more than two seasons post-tank to rebuild things. Oh well.

i'd go full tim murray and trade all three picks for Karlsson (extension in place, obv), because i am out of patience. ottawa won't want to trade in-division but i don't think any other team can offer three first round picks, let alone two of which from teams who missed the playoffs last year. how can they say no to that, knowing they have no pick of their own? (Maybe we can even lottery protect our own since that is the current ridiculous trend of the league.) that would definitely salvage the ROR deal for me. i know it doesn't fit the mold of a rebuild at all, but i'd be all for EK65 "mentoring" Dahlin. at least we could definitively say our defense has improved. it would likely lead to Risto being dealt eventually but you never know. as much as i hate the ROR trade and think it was a step in the wrong direction, there is no arguing that the bottom 6 has improved. a guy like EK on the back end with Dahlin presents hope that our defense will be vastly improved. maybe the team overall could take a step forward this season after all.

this is basically all that matters to me when thinking about this trade. i personally feel we got fleeced -- i'm sure i am heavily biased and equally uninformed on the prospect/players we are getting. but it is more about my unwillingness to start over. we have wasted the last 10 years of our fanhood being bad, and the last 5 years being the epitome of bad. i'm really not ready to buy into "another rebuild" -- especially after listening to JBotts talk about age being a factor in the trade. if 27 is too old for this group, then my god -- it will be 5 years before this team sniffs a playoff birth. it is soul crushing, to be honest. i've lost my passion for the game as well over the last 5 years. i am ryan o'reilly.

beautifully written. i love you

you understand the point i was making. you act like everybody hated o'reilly up until trade rumors started swirling. that is wrong. there was just no reason for anyone to go around saying how great o'reilly is in the midst of another last place season.

that team wasn't 'rebuilding' or in last place.

that is silly logic. there is no reason to go around saying how great o'reilly is when he is our own property (under contract for many more years) and universally considered a pretty good player around the league. of course people are going to stand up and voice their opinions about how good o'reilly once it became possible they would trade him.

Yes, but it would be much easier to part with our pick for an established player like that knowing that we have at least one, and maybe two, other first round picks to pocket

3 years from now we will have officially wasted 6 years of Jack Eichel. unbelievable

one step forward by drafting Dahlin, two big steps backward by trading o'reilly for junk. see you guys next year, when the media runs jack eichel out of town after he expresses frustration about finishing in last place for the third time in four years or however many, who the hell even cares anymore

the fact that the pick is top 10 protected is an absolute embarrassment. i'm not surprised, but i don't understand how that became standard practice in the NHL. if a team said they wanted to protect their pick, i would call the deal off. but sadly thats not the worst part of the trade

wow, underwhelming

I agree with this assessment. And I'll add that Evander Kane is better than Sheary. I know we all hate Lehner, but Hutton is a stop-gap journeyman -- I hope he performs better than Lehner but as far as I'm concerned it is a wash. Dahlin is a great, lucky addition, but is he going to take a 31st place team to the playoffs in his rookie year? Probably not. i have a bad feeling that this team is going to be awful. But if they trade O'Reilly, it is going to be worse.

Personally, no way. Admittedly I don't know much about Hinostroza, but it seems Duncan Keith would be the "key" piece in the trade and I'm just not interested in a 34-year-old shell of Keith. Plus, he has 5 years still on his deal and is probably only going to regress. Maybe if we were closer to "winning now." I don't have high hopes for Nylander or Fasching becoming important contributors here but that would be a huge overpayment in my opinion. I do like McCabe a lot and would not trade him. Everyone should stop doing Chicago favors. Let them live with the cap hell they created.

Is anybody going to the game tonight that would be able to sneak out an extra Hasek bobblehead? I will pay shipping if anybody can get their hands on one for me. Hasek was always my favorite player growing up, but I can't justify a day off from work to watch this team. Haha.

Great news. I hope its true. Is it possible, though,that there was a miscommunication and the "source" was talking about the winter classic jerseys?

Wow, unbelievable. I don't have time to catch up on the thread so I'm sure some of my thoughts will have already been posted. I didn't see this coming at all, and I don't agree with firing Tim Murray. It was a disappointing season but I don't 3 years is enough time for a GM, especially one in Tim's situation. Terry knew going in that the plan was to rebuild, and I don't think it's fair to expect a GM to complete a rebuild in just 3 years. One more disappointing season, then I would have been on board. Which leads me to wonder if Pegula wanted Dan gone, and Murray said he was going with him because he didn't agree with it. I wonder what kind of impact this will have on the potential signing of Antipin from the KHL? I also wonder what kind of impact this will have on the expansion draft. A few weeks ago Tim Murray dropped a hint that maybe he had done George McPhee a favor in the past and was expecting one in return, relating to the expansion draft. Well obviously that won't be happening now.

To say the tank is a failure is, no offense, one of the stupidest things I've read in a while. Sure, it'd be great if we had gotten McDavid. And I'm sure there are people out there who would rather have Auston Matthews. Maybe even Ekblad instead of Sam. It doesn't change the fact that teams are built through the draft, and you still have to be pretty freaking bad to have a shot to draft an elite talent. Somebody posted something along the lines of, "any plan that only has a 1-in-5 chance of success is a dumb plan." That is so revisionist. Of course everyone would prefer McDavid, but every single person in the hockey world, be it GMs, coaches, scouts, or media, unanimously agreed that both are elite talents. It was NEVER a "1 in 5" chance of getting an elite player... in fact IIRC it was about as close to a 100% certainty as you could get from January 2015 forward. Earlier in the season I fell into the same trap many of you seem to be stuck in now -- jealous of the Leafs & their young superstar and his stats. But I saw more than enough this season to know that Eichel is the real deal. He is just as good if not better than Matthews. And while the Sabres rebuild has stalled out a bit, I'm not for one second regretting the tank. Thanks to Randall Flagg for the great post above w/ graphs and stats. Very re-assuring. I disagree. Granted, I saw way more Sabres games than Leafs games, but Toronto is always my first choice to watch on Gamecenter on nights when the Sabres didn't play. I feel like I saw a ton of "wow" moments from Jack, and maybe not that many from Auston beyond his 4 goal debut. Nylander and Marner led the highlight reels in Toronto in my opinion. Edit: So I guess what I'm really saying is, it's not about Jack vs Auston or one being better than the other. It's more about their supporting casts, Nylander/Marner/JVR/Kadri/Bozak vs Reinhart/Kane/O'Reilly. Throw in the D-men too, you get the point. They have a deeper and better team around Auston. Jack is in no man's land with some occasional help from Sam/Kane/Ryan.

the nhl sucks

I think this thread is ridiculous. As much as "tanking" has become a buzzword, it's not something you can just purposely do repeatedly for years on end. What actually IS tanking? Trading away your valuable players for picks and young talent that isn't NHL-ready yet, and hoping to lose games. We did that, we got our picks, we got our young talent, and we got our #2 draft pick. How do you suggest we go about "tanking" any further? Undo the O'Reilly trade? Trade Eichel & Sam for draft picks? It's not like we have a Vanek, Miller, Pominville to trade away. Nobody is going to give us much for say, Bogosian, and frankly the team isn't going to be any worse off without him. Also, the projected #1 pick this year, by all accounts I've read, is not really near the level of the top picks of the last few drafts. If you're suggesting we should have passed on the O'Reilly and Kane trades for a 20% (at best, but not likely we get that anyway) at Matthews last year then I would say you're crazy. Edit: The Lehner trade I could do without, but I don't really think that impacts our "tank" chances anyway.