MattPie

Are players under 24 allowed on team USA and Canada? (I'm really asking) If not, the split makes some, but not a lot, of sense. Otherwise, I'll revise my statement to "a team of under 24s that weren't good enough to make the national teams doesn't make much sense." :)

I could see doing something like team Europe to bring together the good players from countries that don't have enough to put together a team and be competitive, but I'm not sure I understand team North America, considering it ends up being the "B team" to USA and Canada. I could see USA, CAN, SWE, FIN, RUS, CZE, GER, and ROW (rest of the world) as teams.

That truly is awesome.

I think I need to take a leave of absense from this place. I hear Scunthrope is nice this time of year.

From my armchair, there's "no way" GMTM fires HCHDDB after just one season coming off last year. Next year if the team doesn't progress, perhaps. If nothing else, firing a guy after one year is burning bridges with other coaches.

Does this help?

I think Nikki Haley said the other day, "Donald Trump is all the things I taught my kids not to do in Kindergarten." Serious question: why? What about Trump makes you think he'll be a good president? (I'm not trying to be argumentative, I really want to know; others on the board have asked the other Trump supporter (bobis?) and he wouldn't give us anything to go on)

Here I thought it was going to be "All In" or "Oceans 13". :)

Wow, lots of gloom and doom. I'll still be watching, the hockey is more fun this year.

Hah, nice. I thought Lehner was really shaky. At least twice he was making snow angels in the crease for no apparent reason. He made a few nice saves, but the giant rebound on the called back goal, and weak OT goal.

I knew the name, from another life when I played bass. Nice reference. Phew.

Curses, I wanted to see Toronto throw a pick like that and then see Stamkos sign for less money than Toronto offers somewhere else. They'd have to find a more extreme headline than the "Ultimate Insult" one they pulled out for Gorges signing here.

I get what you're saying, but that's a list of 24 players spanning at least 25 years. If Tim Murray finds one of the handful of guys out of the 150 that'll be picked in the 3rd thru 7th round this year, hooray! But if none of the guys pan out, I'm not going to cry about it either.

It's been a long time since I read it, but the things that stood out to me where that the system only allowed 5-character passwords and that the NSA built some sort of giant custom computer that melted down. The latter is possible, but at the time (and now), all the largest "public" computers in the world were built using many, many, units of fairly common server hardware running software that ties them together into a cluster. I remember there being more things that irked me, but it was at least 8-9 years ago. I liked DaVinci and Angles and Daemons, but I can't think about those books now without thinking that his grasp on those subjects is just as tenuous.

I gave up on him after I read the NSA one. It was so, so, wrong about how computers worked I couldn't look at the other books I'd read the same way.

I can't believe GMTM traded away a top-line forward for Cody Hodgson! (double ;))

Over under on Toronto throwing a pick to TBL for Stamkos' rights in June. I'd put it at a 4.5 rounder. Discuss! :)

I agree, they're not a huge piece, but they might be enough to swing things. Hopefully at the end of next year we're in a position to need a rental player. :)

I disagree.

Well, this year 3rd round picks bought the rentals of Martin Gelinas, Justin Schultz, Mike, Weber, and Teddy Purcell. A couple other trades were a 2nd and a 4th, maybe those trades swing the Sabres way if they're in on it and offer a 3rd to beat out someone else's 4th.

Me neither, but I'm sure the NHL system is equally opaque for someone who doesn't spend too much time here too.

I went and looked, and Buffalo didn't have a 1st in that draft I'm sure it was a Darcy special, trade us your expiring power forward for a 1st, no reasonable offer refused! Buffalo slotted at 28th, with which the Sharks took Nick Petrecki, who looks to be out of playing hockey, and possibly in jail from a bar fight. One NHL game to his credit, no points, no PIM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Petrecki I looked at that draft, and the #8 pick by Boston, Zack Hamill played 20 NHL games and is in Europe now. Coture, McDonough, and Shattenkrik were picked shortly after Hamill. BUFFALO: Darcy Special indeed, the first went to Washington who then traded it to SJ: February 27, 2007 that sent Dainius Zubrus and Timo Helbling to Buffalo in exchange for Jiri Novotny and this pick.

Scanning through the trades, it seems like a bunch of Edmonton D shipped out and some picks and a few forwards came back including our old friend Zack Concept of Kassian. They swapped out a G too, but I think those are backups. I don't recognize most of the names, which speaks largely to my ignorance of the NHL in general but it's possible several of those players were AHL-level. I'm not sure what EDM is up to, since it seems like they need D (at least most years). Maybe they decided the D they had weren't going to cut it so they fire-saled everything and they'll move some big forward pieces for D after the season.

At best, if you were already working a hockey trade you might be able to turn an early 2nd into a late first to balance out value. Something like, Ennis and my (early) 2nd for Drew Miller and your (late) 1st. (I'm guessing Ennis has more value than Drew Miller, but whatever)

Not on it's own, like "I'll trade you two thirds for your second", but more like "I'll trade you Malkin for Pysyk and your second." "How about Pysyk and my third?" "No. Pysyk and two thirds?" "Deal." You could argue that 2 3rd == 1 2nd in that scenario, but it's not that easy. (Shout out to wookie for the trade inspiration! :))