Eleven

That is all pizza everywhere, for me. It is annoying, indeed.

Well that's it, then; Ottawa paid a pretty heavy price though.

I can't really figure this out ,myself. Ottawa is shedding one more year of cap hit on a serviceable, but expensive, defenseman, AND two picks, for nothing? It's weird. I can't really think that Ottawa needs room to take on a superstar--and Ottawa had cap room to begin with. Strange.

I overestimated Jokiharju and underestimated Okposo's ability to be a defensive forward / open up space. Other than that, I don't think I got too much wrong. I've been worried about the goaltending all year and I've never had much faith in Mittlestadt.

I'm doing something else with the rest of my evening.

Of course it's O'Reilly.

The Real Madrid-Liverpool halftime puts the NFL to shame. It's like 15 mins of straight ads. Not even the pretense of a halftime show.

Guess what? I've got access to the game tonight. I'm all set. Bitching about the NHL being stupid with marketing its product is different from bitching about my personal situation. Not everything is about the individual. You grow up.

No, not what I'm saying. But there is no salary cap in the playoffs and we've seen teams pull this for three or four successive seasons now.

Based upon my examination, his medical records, and his family history, yes. Come on, are you serious? You don't think teams play around with LTIR?

Of course they are. And they should. The system is exploitable and good teams exploit it. Cf. Tampa, or even (on a much smaller level) my idea in the Clague thread.

Except Barbashev, the players leaving/expiring are all JAGs, though. I think that team is going to turn things around more quickly than most teams do. They just need to spend $1-2M on a psychoanalyst for Binnington.

This sounds very good.

Just because I like finding loopholes, and we know other teams exploit them, here's what I'd do as an asst GM, with the Amerks dormant until Friday: "Hey, Larry, how'd you like to grab dinner and see the game tonight? Oh, and bring your bag. We'd like to look at your equipment and make sure you have the right gear." If he has to play without a proper warmup, it's still better than having only 5 D. Or maybe he warms up in the dressing room for the first half of the first period. "Oh, I have plans." "Larry, I REALLY think you should come to see the game tonight."

This is not a rhetorical question, it's real, about the CBA, NHL rules, etc.: They're not allowed to invite him to the game and have him around just in case?

Put him in the car now...if he's needed, emergency callup; if not, he gets a ticket to the game and a hot dog.

No, but I don't quite understand your "I don't know what to tell you" in this context.

I mean, all I said was an implication that this is stupid. Which it is. I have no idea whether the other 31 teams have the same issue. I didn't reach out to you for advice, did I?

How do I predict a three week hole in watchable games? By looking at the draft schedule.

So were the rest of the games. It's bad scheduling.

It clears Stone's prorated salary, allowing them to bring in new players with commensurate prorated salaries. The math is the same no matter how it's phrased. It's easier to just say "over 9M in cap" because then we can look at who they're bringing in, with, e.g., $3.6M and $5M cap hits, and see that it works. Cute. What about Trotz? Or Cooper? Or any other coach who doesn't have to be obnoxious to succeed?

The Sabres last played a primetime game on TV that is accessible to most fans on Feb. 1. Since then, there has been one Saturday afternoon game that I would presume conflicted with things for a lot of people, and there have been three games that are unwatchable for most of the fan base because of the late start times. And then they put tonight's game on Hulu. Smart, NHL. Real smart.

Yep

Knights put Stone on LTIR; that clears over 9M in cap.

THAT's why he won't.