shrader

That Zagrapan draft was really crappy. Outside of some guy who went first overall, there is maybe a handful of good players in that draft. Strangely enough, the worst players of the batch are all centralized right around the Zagrapan pick. As for the other missed first rounders, the picks as a whole are much later than we’re used to on our present day of garbage hockey. That’s much deeper into crap shot land, especially with the tar t pool not being as developed and NHL ready as they are today. I’d be willing to bet that the success rate, however one might measure that, is higher today than it was 10-20 years ago.

He brought in more than enough talent to build a very good hockey team. The main problem was no retaining that talent. It's tough to know for sure how much credit belongs to the drafting team when it comes to guys who develop after moving onto a new organization, but if you look at the resumes of all of those players as a whole, I do think there's a very good team in there. Sure there were plenty of misses, but I think the hits outweighed them. Failure to sign and develop does not equal a failure to draft. The results to look to tail off though towards the later years. I'd suspect that you'll find that this coincides pretty well with when old sugar packets tightened the purse strings on all things off the ice.

Missing a couple games could cost him a few dollars on the next contract. We have to find the positives where ever we can. Pu's already been dumped. That trade is listed as future considerations, so they may in fact have gotten nothing for him.

The way our defensemen were dropping like flies, there's no way I'd ever assume a cup win if they had escaped that game. At the rate things were going, the Sabres would have been forced to hand second pairing minutes to 2007 4th round draft pick in game 4 of the final. That's why 99 will always sting more for me. That team only needed to win one more game instead of a full series.

The hyperbole around this trade has gotten to the point of absurdity. Yeah, he can never come out ahead on a trade ever after making that deal. If only he had pulled the trigger on another deal 32 days later. Or some other deal roughly one year later.

That year? Wasn't he at one point the longest tenured player ever in the league to not score a single goal? Or maybe it was just among forwards. I remember there being some specific designation for his impressive level of futility. It's funny to see now, 3 years later that he actually has a pair of 10+ goal seasons under his belt.

I associate that team with the 90s for whatever reason, so I hadn't thought of them when reading this. One thing you left out was the 8-0 massacre to eliminate Philly in the first round. What Sabre fan doesn't love something like that? But man, that Pittsburgh series is way up there on the list of painful results. Down 2 games to 0, storm back to win the next 3, then lose the last 2 in OT. And then you mix in that it was the end of the Hasek era and the whole thing just stings. We had our brief run a few years later, but it really was the start of the darkness around these parts. And on a side note, the recently deceased Vlad Tsyplakov was on that team. I hope they acknowledge him, even if they already did back when he died.

So Wilson goes back to Rochester. They would only need to open up that one roster slot, but who else comes out of the lineup? Sheary got one the other day so he at least gets a 1 game free pass. Rodrigues seems like an option, but he's one of the very limited options to center a line.

This one will never happen. Just imagine being a CHL team and having your best player called up in the middle of an intense playoff run. At least when you lose someone at the start of the season, you have time to build in backup plans. Sure, this exact scenario could happen today with an emergency recall, but those require some crazy and rare circumstances and are by definition short-term.

I hate when he added paint jobs. At that point, the helmet lost what made it unique.

They already had that exact fear long before this virus showed up.

Hands/stick up into the face and then immediately backing off. That really is classic Chara. If he was human sized people would call it cowardly, but with him they call it restraint.

I want to see how bouncyball stats change if you put a tiny leprechaun up there on the rim who attempts to block shots.

Good luck explaining all of that to the average non-hardcore follower of football though. Me personally, I've never really paid much attention to it so I have no clue how they do it, just that they can. People starting from scratch, they're going to figure out the NHL system far quicker and with less effort than they will the NFL.

Thanks, that now all I can think of is "K-UGER!"

Brawndo's quote mentioned "hockey trade", so that implies to me that they'd be packaging the pick with a player.

I misread the post, so I didn't realize that they stopped it. I can't fault anyone for that decision. It's lose/lose, there is no right call there.

Unexpected bumper sticker of the day: Hall/Oates 2020

To be fair, these types of games are not allowed in the NHL. That's one thing I'll always credit the NHL for, at least the average person can understand how their cap works.

Certain people around here would probably love Zegras' attitude after what he did monday night. Caught on tv screaming "**** you" at the referee after an absolutely atrocious penalty call in OT? Yeah, that will win some over, especially when paired with the timely goal scoring.

I realize we're getting into a semantics game here, but different contracts (transfer agreements) negotiated with separate entities, I'm not willing to call each of them special treatment.

Too many syllables.

If they can play after Malarchuk/Zednik I'm pretty sure they can play after anything. I'd bet that playing is actually the easiest escape from it. I hope everything's ok there. That's some truly scary stuff.

I can't just automatically label that as not wanting to go to Buffalo because they suck. Buffalo still has that "Buffalo" reputation and no matter how much we say to counter that, we still see that same "worst destinations" player poll result pop up every single year. That reputation is always going to exist. Sure, some will be impacted by the long streak of horrible results, but it's tough to know each individual's true reasons. When it comes to Zucker, he's a California kid. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the exact person who has that negative view of Buffalo.

The CHL doesn't get special treatment though. If anything, they get to keep their players for the shortest amount of time between the three main sources (CHL, NCAA, europe). But there really is no way around that. It's next to impossible to treat all three the same due to the different rules within each organization.