IKnowPhysics

It's now been rebuilt to a not suck status- maybe. We deserve contender status.

4th among Rochester Americans all-time in GP, 5th in points. I remember him being a potential Sabres callup in NHL 2000.

Effectively, that's what Detroit did. He started in the offensive zone, no joke, 73% of his starts. Vanek's goals for '16-'17. Almost all tips and jams:

My god, I had already forgotten about Adam, Porter, and Flynn. After putting that on the ice, I can see why the NHL changed the draft odds. I mean, the NHL us, but I get it.

...but if it did...

Hotness.

Scandella-Ristolainen McCabe-Shattenkirk Beaulieu-Bogosian Depth: Antipin Fedun Falk Nelson Gorges Guhle Shattenkirk is still worth serious consideration. mostly because we have no NHL-ready right-shot defensemen besides Risto and Bogosian. He'll improve the defense (even if he's "weaker in his own end," he's better than any replacement we currently have), improve the powerplay, and let the young guys develop in Rochester (also improving Rochester's roster). You want to see Housely thrive? Give him the tools to succeed on D.

The only song on Alexander Nylander's workout playlist right now:

Yes, overpayment usually occurs, especially in the case of the most talented free agents. But it's a method to acquire players/talent/assets that does not involve returning assets in exchange. They only cost money/salary cap. Teams overpay for the privelege of not having to trade a house to address their own team's weaknesses. There's real utility in that, and it's annoying that the UFA market has been reduced so much.

Who does he think he is? Mike Babcock?

Don't do that. Don't put two righties on the power play point. If anything thing run one each on PP1 and PP2 and utilize them the same way. But don't put them together if you want to have good puck movement and quick point shots.

I think 8x8 would be fair, 8x9 is fair. Anything more than 9 means a cap hit that's top-seven in the league. Even 10 is almost within bounds, but is reallly ballsy for a kid- and at that point they're riding everything -the whole economics of the team- on his potential. If Eichel doesn't work out to the highest order at 8x10, you just spent 27% of the value of the franchise, a crippling cap hit for the next forever years, a tank campaign, and all of the fan base's hope on nothing. Kopitar makes 10. Ekblad makes 7.5. McDavid may get 13.75, but McDavid has hardware and hates Edmonton.

They have about $10.5M in cap space. $7.8M by itself would hurt them for the next two years, but not put them over the top...until Statsny renegotiates this year and three of their defensemen renegotiate after this year.

1st, 2nd, and 3rd $5.9M-$7.8M.

Would you send a Buffalo 1st and 3rd for him? Because that's the next tier (up to ~$5.9M).

We should offer sheet Colton Parayko from STL for $3.9M/year (2nd round pick).

So, uh, that completely kicked ass. Ended up visiting, in order: Arran (tour and tasting) Springbank (tour and tasting) Laphroaig (educational tasting) Ardbeg (tour and tasting) Lagavulin (educational tasting) Oban (tasting) Talisker (tasting) Highland Park (tour and tasting) Macallan (tasting) Glenfiddich (tour and tasting) 10 distilleries, 1 whisky festival, 68 different whiskys tasted, oldest whisky was 48 years, 10.5L of alcohol brought back (one bottle for every distillery visited, plus some extra), 0 bottle breakage. More importantly, I've learned and experienced. I've broken away from "neat all the time." The 80 proof of most scotches is an artificial lower limit imposed by the legal definition of scotch- most scotches are watered down to this limit before bottling. The higher proof scotches are pretty much designed by the distillers to have water added to them by the drinker (although not imposed- drink how you will), and it really really does change the face of some whiskys. One example is Ardbeg Supernova: it is, by design, a complete smokeshow and bottled at 54.3%. But add a little water to get it closer to 40%, and this overpowered one trick pony opens right up into a completely different, superbly complex, and even-more-delicious dram. Good whisky is good whisky; drink it how you like, experiment with how you taste. The impact of casking is incredible. Cask materials, previous cask liquors, and how many times the casks have been reused for whisky have an enormous impact on flavors. From bourbon to madeira vs pedro ximenez sherries to port, each can impact the flavor. Complexity can be added by finishing maturation in different varieties. For instance, many will use bourbon oak barrels for the majority of maturation, and then if they want a particular flavor added, they'll finish it in a fresh sherry cask. Finishing in a quarter cask exposes the whisky to more surface area -and more cask flavor- than a normal cask. I'd say the casking has as big or bigger impact on flavor than maturation. It was for this reason that almost all of the distilleries in Campbeltown, once the distillery capital of Scotland, failed. When sherry and port barrels became hard to come by, they used the barrels they had: fish barrels. It was known as stinky whisky and drinking that obviously went out of style. Mature whisky is expensive not because it's necessarily better, but because it is rare. Mature whisky is not rare because they don't make a lot of barrels of it- they cask lots of barrels intended for long maturation. Instead, mature whisky is rare because so much is lost from each cask during maturation due to evaporation (angel's share). A 50 year old whisky barrel starting with 195 liters of new make spirit might only have 2-3 liters left in it when it's uncasked, depending on environmental factors. Entire distilleries that have long since been non-operational and mothballed have been purchased for millions of dollars for their warehouses full of old maturing whisky that hadn't been uncasked or bottled yet. Port Ellen Distillery on Islay is one of these. It was shuttered in 1983 and then bought by conglomerate Diageo, who slowly bottles and releases their leftover stock. Port Ellen, depending on vintage, sells for $1000-$6000 per bottle. Every distillery believes they do things the best way: with heritage and craftsmanship. It's marketing. They all still meet the legal definitions of scotch (like using pot stills, oak casks, maturing min 3 years, bottling min 40%, etc), but most change at least a few, if not all, things about their process from the olden times. External malting factories instead of large malting floors, importing peat from other regions of Scotland, modernized and automated process controls, enormous wash and mash tuns, millions of gallons per year capacity, liquor conglomerate ownership and distribution, etc have all come about for some distilleries- and those distilleries still love to tell you about old timey methods and show you some video of some old guy in overalls running his hands through barley, etc. And this stuff drives the actual small, actual family-owned, actual old timey method distilleries bananas. Example: Springbank does almost everything old school with their own malting floors, century old mill equipment, peat furnaces, wood wash and mash tuns, manual cuts, original family owned operation and the like. And they take a serious this-is-the-way-we've-done-it-for-two-hundred-years-and-we're-gonna-keep-doing-it-this-way--all-the-haters attitude with a side of -those-big-guys-and-their-chemical-engineering-degrees and a sprinkle of -their-magazine-ads-with-pictures-of-horses. They're not wrong, but they also don't make my favorite whisky. Ignore the marketing. Remember that good whisky is good whisky.

Clare Drake. The Coaches' Coach. 697-296-37 over 28 years at University of Alberta, 6 CIAU national titles. The testimonals for this guy are off the charts. Here's a few:

Two olympic gold medals and a silver medal, 8 IIHF WC gold medals and a silver medal, one CWHL National Championship; Canada's all time leading scorer in the IIHF WC tournaments; IIHF Hall of Fame. If one measures HOF worthiness by championships, she's probably one of the most decorated hockey players of all time.

I prefer science. Every team hits and misses in the 1st round, especially where we drafted in the 1st during those years (Regier had only one selection in the top 5 and one selection in the 6-10 range). Using draft data from wikipedia and the draft averages calculated from this article, one can calculate and compare Regier's drafting to the league average: Percentages of draft picks playing at least 1 NHL game and percentage of draft picks playing at least 100 NHL games. Player deviation is the difference of the two averages multiplied by the number of Regier's selections in those ranges, to simulate how many players he was able to draft better or worse than average. Less than roughly a one player difference likely means no difference. , He had a few more 4th and 5th round players than average never play in the NHL, and was about one player short of the NHL from the 1st round. However, of players that played at least 100 games, those deficiencies only manifest in the 5th and 7th-to-9th rounds. Regier showed above average proficiency in the 1st and 6th rounds, especially crushing it in the 2nd round (and he selected more 2nd rounders than any other individual round, btw). He statistically drafted four more players that would go on to play at least 100 games than what the NHL average would have drafted.

Yeah, and that bum failed to record more than four 200 point seasons.

I usually don't crap too hard on Regier. He kept this team competitive in an unfair marketplace against teams with 10x the revenue. Drafting was one of his strongest suits, not one of his weakest- at least his ability to hire good drafters like Benning and Devine. For many years, he was deft at recognizing potential in pros and equally deft at fleecing teams for what sometimes ended up being franchise-changing talent. Additionally, in one of his first moves, he made the hard -but ultimately correct- decision on Nolan to straighten out the locker room. He stuck by his coach and his goalies, keeping a small market team mostly stable on the ice through three owners and a bankruptcy. His personnel moves almost always made good sense in contemporary context, even if time would show some of them to not work out at all. Ultimately, an unwillingness to negotiate contracts during the season despite a changing CBA-driven marketplace and several big player busts would lead to his decision to set the tank in motion, a decision that, even if successful, no GM could survive. He also brought the team to the same high level as Imlach, but did so effectively twice and in an economic landscape that was more tilted. He challenges Imlach for top spot in my mind.

Have a seat, son, we need to have a heart to heart. You see, the New York Islanders are stupid.

Heh, you're welcome. On paper, both those guys had enough demonstrable potential and they were gonna fill major gaps. And somehow, it all fell to . And I don't know what we could've done differently (besides maybe not force Leino to play center, which he had played in juniors).

When it comes to Leino and Ehrhoff...