rakish

As far as Bailey, Eichel had very good points with Bailey in extremely limited time last season, I think that's how the lineup will shake out.

What does Blue always say when he's wrong?...sample size! Sample Size!

I want to geek out a bit on this. The problem of playing Eichel with Kane is that it becomes the Kane line, since Kane doesn't get linemates to score. So yes, it's good to separate Eichel and Kane. The problem here is that Girgensons has the exact same issue, players have a really low shooting percentage playing with Girgensons. Of course your linemates have a lot to do with this, since passing the puck to Delo doesn't normally end with the puck in the net. The people that look at possession numbers as critical miss this, since Girgensons "Gets his shots," they just come at the expense of linemates. You know who had really good numbers last year? Foligno, and that's why he's in Minnesota.

2017 pick 68 The Canadiens took a defenseman named Walford, I believe I would have taken Mason Shaw, but I'd have to think about it.

3, why not win all the cups?

On a stat level. Hyman played most of his ES minutes with Matthews (988 of 1098 using my inaccurate method of measuring playing time). Based upon number of shots and their distance, Hyman should have scored 18.0 goals, he scored 6. Willie Nylander played about half of his ES minutes with Matthews, scored about as many as he should have, but scored goals much better without him, he was .56/60 with Nylander, and .74/60 total, meaning that he was roughly .9/60 without Matthews. Connor Brown played about a third of his ES minutes with Matthews, scored more than he should have, but like Nylander, scored less with Matthews, .84/60, than without, roughly 1.1/60. Therefore, Matthews lacked assists because he played with an unskilled offensive player (Hyman) and he doesn't enable his linemates who are (Nylander and Brown)

I think your methods are bad, but I'm willing to watch. R O'Reilly 5-5 goals per 60 points per 60 2016 .58 1.41 2015 .53 1.81 2014 .65 2.00 2013 .93 2.00 2012 .42 1.84 2011 .53 1.75 2010 .64 1.28 2009 .34 1.37 Okposo 5-5 2016 .74 1.23 2015 .63 1.99 2014 .78 2.09 2013 1.12 2.73 2012 .34 1.76 2011 1.07 1.99 2010 .61 1.69 2009 .72 1.49 2008 .64 1.71 2007 1.01 2.02

#14, I like Foote, but not as much as I like Lilgegren #48, compare Volkov's scoring to Shvyryov's (who Colorado picked much later) scoring #76 Lipanov is young enough that it's not a bad pick, but there are a lot of guys I really like still on the board #169 Overage high school player, no thank you. #180 I have Guttman as the 69th best forward, so at pick 180, not terrible, but not on my board either. #200 Young enough that it's not a definite no So 2017, I see one NHL hockey player, which is what poor drafting teams do. Lately, not so good, their pipeline isn't that strong. Before that, fantastic, they were really good a few years back. What's interesting to me is that I think the same guy (Al Murray) has been running the program for a while, so why he stopped taking players I like, I don't know On Flagg's first post. Johnson wasn't drafted, if I remember right, college grad, NHL had a size bias issue, that seems to be disappearing rapidly, maybe mostly due to Tampa's success. I have Kutcherov as the 12th best forward in his year, so he's a great 3rd round pick, but it was a draft before I started doing this, so take that with a grain of salt, since it's looking through past drafts when I already know the right answer. Palat didn't score in his draft year, but this is why they need to pay more attention to overagers, because by the time he was drafted, he was 44th in his draft class, which isn't bad for the 7th round. Point is on my Mom's basement team for 2014, so me and Tampa totally agree here. Dotchin I wouldn't have drafted, hung around 40th best defenseman for his draft class before last year, when he got to 10th

Chibs sucks... I've actually have never watched Sons of Anarchy

You're just looking at it down from the sky instead of up from the ice

Why I'm not convinced Taro is that Pittsburgh doesn't have motivation to get Malkin against Larsson, I'm guessing they would love to have Malkin against Reinhart. My point here is that last night I was thinking that last years strategy was to get Larsson against the opponents best players, and play 4th against 4th. This year they may still want to get Larsson against the best players, and have Reinhart play against the other teams 4th.

I don't think all strategies work, and as Taro says, it could have been the work of Pittsburgh, but last year the Sabres 4th line was rarely on the ice against top lines, last year the Sabres were able to have either the Larsson line or the O'Reilly line on both Malkin and Crosby.

I thought it was interesting how Housley matched lines as opposed to Bylsma. Eichel played against Crosby, I can't believe this will be Housley's thinking a month from now, as I expect them to be lit up. The second line was Larsson, Josefson, and Delo, as they played against Malkin. I don't think Delo can play against Malkin regularly, and this is why Nolan was brought in. This leaves both O'Reilly and Reinhart against bottom six competition. I paid attention to this a few years back, maybe the short season, and I found Colorado and Toronto (when they were both bad, and funnily enough, it was O'Reilly who was given the better matchups then too.) were using this type of line-matching strategy. I'll be curious to see if it works or not, my current belief is that it just doesn't matter.

Cernak and Lintuniemi

Oh, I think there is. If you math out the success rates of draft picks, overagers are clearly a group of players you want to draft. My guess is you want 3 or 4 overagers for your 7 picks. You can pretty much stop drafting 17 year olds not born in June-September after the 3rd round. This is why teams like Buffalo don't get anyone after round 2 because they haven't looked at history of success at all.

Certainly liger, age is often an overlooked factor. Pu is only a handful of months older than Mittelstadt, which I think people ignore. My Nylanders' chart.

I think 3 is an ambitious yet reasonable number

Why not win all the cups?

Yes, it looks like they are up to 2 players per draft, instead of 1, which is a huge improvement

Where did wunder kid go? Edit, nevermind, I understood the second time. For me, 2017 looks like a New Jersey Devil draft. (Although they hired a reasonable analytic so the past couple drafts haven't been so bad)

They drafted an (overager, which is good) center that doesn't score Yeah, they drafted a 6'6" defenseman that doesn't score. They drafted a 159 pound center that doesn't score They drafted a high school defenseman that barely scored in high school Now lets look at 2016 Korshkov, part of team rakish in Mom's Basement Stakes, was very good at the WJC20, probably overdrafted here (as an overager), I got him 7th round year before Gundstrom, part of team rakish in Mom's Basement Stakes Brooks, overager real prospect Chebeken, overage real prospect So in 2016, they drafted players that have qualities of players that succeed, in 2017, they didn't. I don't think it's a stretch to believe different people were responsible for selecting players.

While I have been the biggest supporter of what the leafs had been doing, I thought their draft in 2017 was poor, despite unbelievably getting Lilgegren. My theory is the people that knew what they were doing no longer have the power they had in previous years, because their previous few years their drafting has been excellent.

I'm hoping you're not Botterill in real life

Last year Bylsma tried to hide Eichel from the Sidney Crosby's of the world, I'm sure Housley does the same. If the home/road thing (you were going to argue this, weren't you?) mattered so much, teams would be a lot better at home. I don't think it matters so much. On preview: I'm much more with qwk on this one than WC

No please irritate the masses, better yet, start a new link that people can ignore if they don't care.