nfreeman

No — not the episode that Bucky hosted — the one I was referring to was the following one.

I voted for all 3 in the AHL to start the season.

Tim Graham and Jerry Sullivan had a pretty good discussion of the RB situation on TG's podcast a few days ago (although you'll need to skip a solid 30 minutes of them discussing the NBA playoffs to get to it). I've criticized the local media a fair amount over the years, but I thought TG's analysis was quite good (Sully less so but still somewhat interesting).

Well, speaking only for myself, I didn't give the "fails his physical" option for Bogo serious consideration as I (like everyone else here) have no idea what his physical condition is or how likely he is to pass/fail his physical. As for the other options, no one is going to trade for him and he's not going to take a buyout. Why in the world would he do so? No one is going to give him close to the amount of cash he'd be giving up.

Well, it doesn't sound likely, but if PK is indeed traded again, after only 1 year in Nashville, then we can start to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way he plays and/or conducts himself, and to walk back the criticism of the Habs for unloading him before his NMC kicked in.

It's an interesting idea, but once you get to $4MM per year on the offer sheet, the RFA comp is a #1 and a #3. That's more than I would want to pay for him, and likely (possibly?) more than the Caps would get if they auctioned him off.

Max turns 30 in November, will be a UFA after next season and is coming off his career-low scoring season. I don't think he'll cost nearly that much. Maybe the Sabres' #2 pick this year? That would be pretty close to dudacek's low #1. I'm not sure whether anyone would give more than that given Max's contract situation -- and I don't think anyone would trade for him and give him a big contract right away either. I'm endorsing both goalie as top priority and Max on Eichel's wing IF they can get him without giving up more than their #2 pick this year plus someone like Bailey or Baptiste. Although I agree that the Caps won't be able to keep both, I think a trade will be necessary because there will be multiple teams interested in getting whichever one the Caps decide to trade.

Good stuff. Thanks. It sounds like everyone needs to chill out a bit on the Bobby Orr comparisons.

Sorry NS. We're thinking of you and your awesome wife.

Not the win total. The fact that they put up quality wins -- including road wins -- after a generation of failing to do so -- IMHO reflects well on McD.

In that 17-year drought, there was 1 good win vs the Pats and 1 vs the Packers, both at home. Last year, they beat Denver at home, Atlanta (SB team the previous year) on the road, Miami (playoff team the previous year) twice, the Raiders (playoff team the previous year) at home and KC (playoffs last year and the previous year) on the road. The Atlanta and KC road wins alone were better than the total number of good wins during the drought.

In addition to making the playoffs, they also had more quality wins last year than during the prior 17 years combined.

Respectfully, I don't think Roysie EVER displayed an iota of the heart that is a big part of Sharp's game. What Roysie was good at was putting up numbers in a low-pressure, favorable-matchup role -- i.e. as the center of the 3rd line when Briere's and Drury's lines drew the opponent's top defenders. If that's all Reino can do -- it's better than nothing, but it's not a core role either.

I need to see Reino start off next season strong, and clearly be part of the solution and not part of the problem, before I think of him as a core piece of this team's future. If he has another season like he did this year -- i.e. terrible when it counted and then a bunch of garbage-time points to juice his stats for the year -- then he looks a lot more like Derek Roy than Patrick Sharp.

I think he's going to be really good.

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhh.

Well, everyone will have his or her own views on this. I generally agree that this incident shouldn't make her unemployable for life. However, the job we're hiring for requires that the person interact with clients and other outsiders in a professional manner and generally reflect well on us to the outside world. Since this incident was pretty recent, this young woman obviously can't be trusted to do so at this point in her life.

OK -- as I posted in the playoffs thread, I'm ready to commit to Braden Holtby as my #1 offseason target for the Sabres, with Grubauer as my fallback. It looks like the Caps have enough cap space to keep both, but they also have a good goalie prospect in their system -- Ilya Samsonov, their #1 pick in 2015 -- and the plan reportedly is for them to bring Samsonov over from the KHL for next season. So it's fairly likely that they trade either Holtby (if they want to free up more cap space) or Grubauer. Holtby is under contract for 2 more years at a $6.1MM cap hit. His numbers declined this year -- he was 7th in the NHL in wins, but had fairly pedestrian GAA and SV%. But over the last 3 years, he's #1 in wins, #7 in GAA and #13 in SV%. And the 2 years left on his contract means that it's not an Okposo-like enormous commitment that goes on forever. Grubauer played 35 games this year and had better GAA and SV% than Holtby. Grubauer is cheaper and is trending up, while Holtby is expensive and trending down (although he's had a great playoffs). If Holtby is put on the market, a number of teams will be interested. Could the Sabres get him for Nylander and their #2 pick this year? Who says no?

I was living in DC at the time and attended 2 of the Caps-Sabres conf. finals games in 1998. (The Caps were then swept in the finals that year by Detroyit.) As for Hasek's departure -- that was after the 2nd-round loss to Pittsburgh in 2001 -- and that was Dom's last game as a Sabre. Separately: I would freaking love for the Sabres to trade for Holtby this summer. It is indeed outstanding.

So at work we are hiring a junior person for a post-college, 2- to 3-year role. Someone screens all of the resumes and googles the ones who look promising to find out whether there is any damaging info out there on them. One young woman who made it through the first screen with very good college grades didn't make it to the interview stage because she was arrested last year for drunkenly urinating on the sidewalk in front of a police station, and then punching a cop when he tried to get her to move along. She's now working for NY state, btw.

No -- because it's in MH's interest to cultivate good relationships with the teams and their owners so he can get interviews, inside info, hear their side of the story, etc. This would help him present himself as a prominent and respected voice, instead of a low-rent loser who throws tantrums at press conferences, has widely respected NHL writers publiclyl disavowing him and continually gets into public spats online.

I thought he was talking about Kim's comment.

Does MH think it's a savvy career move, as a local sportswriter, to call the owner of the 2 major pro sports teams in his town "pathetic?"

Sauve should be the #1 goalie. And JF Sauve could be a depth player/PP specialist.

Good stuff here boys. I agree with much of what Robvy said. As I've posted previously, I think ROR had a poor start to the season and, although his scoring numbers weren't horrible, was pretty much invisible until after the season was lost. Like Reino, he put up good numbers in garbage time, such that the season doesn't look like a debacle on the stat sheet. But he didn't have a good season IMHO. And part of his $7.5MM per year is supposed to be for leadership, and if he's led them anywhere, it's into a ditch. BUT he's still a very good player, and I would only unload him if either (i) he's a major problem in the locker room, which we can't know, or (ii) someone knocks their socks off with a crazy offer.