shrader

Charles Barkley?

I have no issue with Palffy, he's just not a guy who would ever enter any discussion of the greatest players of all time.

The team can walk away from the deal if it was a player initiated arbitration. But that's only if it is above a certain figure and it looks like the ERod deal would net pass that threshold. So yeah, they won't be able to walk away from him. That's what happened with Kennedy, they had to buy him out because his contract was too small to walk away from.

The problem is that for the majority of his career, he was never the best player on his own team. Then there's the Pittsburgh stretch where he wasn't even the second best. He's also 4th all time in games played, which inflated his career points total. Averaging over a point per game is a nice career stat, but you're overvaluing it. He's currently tied in that number with Pat Kane and I'm sure most would be far more impressed with the guy who put up that number in today's game. And here's another reason why that points per game stat isn't as impressive as one might think. The guy who is one spot ahead of Kane and Francis on the points per game ranking? Ziggy Palffy (tied with Alex Mogilny, strangely enough).

I think they should just store it in the neighborhood retention pond.

It's kind of a weird stance to take, saying that you can't take into account future moves, particularly when a trade heavily revolves around draft picks. That is by definition a move that is made with future plans in mind. Now if you were to turn around and trade one of the players in a year or two, I'm fine with not viewing that as a positive towards the initial trade.

Right, but we're looking at veteran depth guys here who are trying to get that next contract. Think of a guy like Lee Stempniak, he's had a few of these in recent years. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Pominville got this route somewhere if he wants to continue playing. Those kids straight out of college are a different animal. They tend to get their so called tryout deals at the end of the season as opposed to during training camp like the guys here.

A typo that just happens to be a common girl’s name. That shouldn’t fuel them at all.

Oh sure, but you're perfectly ok with naming him rookie of the year with ten years of NHL experience under his belt. I suppose that's no less ridiculous than letting yet another thread spiral down this path for the 85th time this week.

Those two weren't PTO's though. They signed actual contracts once they were out of school. Nelson may have had one briefly to get in his few games in the AHL after he signed, but it was in no way a try out. That would have been done to stop the first year of his contract from kicking in. This thread is about veteran free agents who are unsigned. We really don't have much of any recent track record in that department.

That thing would never fit in a garage.

Does yours have bumper marks on it too?

D-bag neighbor decided to do this to us all weekend:

That guy needs a more consistent system for abbreviation. If only the league had official ones for each team...

I'm doing a little digging on this since I never remember that to be the case in the NHL. So far, the furthest I've checked so far is this from 1993, which mentions the arbitrator being able to pick any number within the range. It does mention some changes in 1992, but I'm too lazy to go back any further. That's far enough back to the point where I wouldn't have had any clue what salary arbitration was.

He had such an incredible season that they even named him rookie of the year??

Hasn't the NHL's rule always been that the arbitrator gets to pick any number within the range? Baseball is the one where they take one number or the other.

Come on now, let's not pretend that Boston had the slightest clue what they were doing when they made that trade.

With today's TVs, most teams should be wearing bright colors. Obviously I don't mean Seattle Seahawk highlighter bright, but we need to move away from the color schemes that may as well have been intended for black and white TVs.

All I can think of is all those people who say we can't ever make a trade with Toronto.

That episode itself is a christmas tradition in my house.

Duval is a former golf ball? Thanks, now I'm picturing him as some sort of Syracuse orange-type character.

Again, to the soccer jersey thing I say: Why?

Go read any recap you can find of David Duval's day yesterday. I'm willing to bet that you won't find a single one that says "he played the wrong golf ball" .

I've always called him overrated, and that was before he just inexplicably was thrown in the top ten. I was one of those guys who was on the Adam Oates HoF train every single year he was passed over. Take a look at him and Francis, a first ballot inductee from the same era, side by side. There are only two differences: longevity and riding the coattails of a superteam to back to back cups. These were both really good players worth of the HoF, but there's a long list of busts I would flock to first if I ever make it back to that building.