Drunkard

I will never understand this mindset. I've never heard anyone brag about how "yeah my team sucks but this other good team is in my division and they've won like a dozen championships over the last 20 years so it makes me feel better that my team sucks. They aren't really that bad for not beating X because nobody can." Nobody thinks the Bills, Jets, or Dolphins are good except that they keep running into the Patriot* buzzsaw. They all suck and even a dozen more titles for Belichick isn't going to change it. Also, who even keeps track of division cups? If the Blues win, do you think the Blackhawks or Wild will bask in the glory of a Central team that isn't them being Stanley Cup Champion? If the divisions change do you suddenly feel different about a Championship that was decided 10 year ago because now that team is either in your division now or suddenly isn't? Do you recalculate the tallys for what division has won the most Championships when there's a realignment or does it only matter what division they are in when the Cup was actually won? I can somewhat understand the I don't want other teams to win their first before Buffalo does mindset even though I don't subscribe to it (because I'd rather see Boston die in a fire than win anything) but the other part is way more puzzling.

Improved wingers plus the past year of experience should definitely help. He's not good enough to be saddled with mediocre players like Okposo and Pominville and he's definitely not good enough to perform while playing with a bum like Sobotka or players who aren't ready themselves like Thompson. I think we need to re-sign Skinner and then staple either him or Reinhart to his wing while making sure the 3rd guy on his line is at least as good as Rodriguez.

And the JB fan boys continue to make excuses for him. He's either an idiot because he actually thought he was getting a good deal or he's a wimp because he couldn't stand up to ownership and properly inform them that how badly getting O'Reilly off the team as quickly as possible/by any means necessary would set the team back. Being that they had recently hired him to run the team he should have had the clout to make a better hockey decision. Otherwise his role is to simply execute the decisions of novice owners. It reflects poorly on him in either scenario.

Go Blues! The only thing Boston should ever win at is dying in fires.

He did have a choice. O'Reilly was under contract. It doesn't matter if he wanted to be traded because it wasn't up to him and even if he did demand to be traded he didn't make it public. Duchene wanted to be traded and it was already public knowledge but Colorado refused to just accept the best crappy offer available. They made him suck it up until Colorado got the return they desired. The artificial timeline killed it and even if it came from Terry and Kim, Botterill should have explained that to them and convinced them to take a longer view.

I think he's our 2nd line center next season. He's not ready for the role yet and he probably won't be proficient at the job for another season or 2, but that's where the team and roster is at so I'd rather see him try to grow into the role than watch our GM get taken to the shed again by trading Ristolainen for some mediocre stop gap like JT Miller. It would be great if we had the center depth to break him in on the wing last season but that didn't happen so at this point it's better to just let him take his lumps now.

I thought this thread was about our idiot GM and how he was stupid enough to think Casey Mittelstadt was ready to center the second line before the season started. My mistake. Maybe if we had kept "he who will not be named" then Mittelstadt could have played wing in the top 6 and been more productive.

O'Reilly is worth more than a first round pick and a team's 4th or 5th best prospect. People seem to love to make excuses for Botterill and why he made such a ***** trade, but any way you slice it the trade was *****. I believe he thought Berglund and Sobotka had actual value which makes me question his ability to evaluate talent. If he did only take them on as cap dumps to make the money work then I question his ability to judge talent anyway, because he received horrible value for a 1B center who produced well, is still in his prime, and is under contract for several more seasons. Doug Armstrong took him the shed and spanked him on this trade. Imagine if we could trade a 1st round pick, Okposo, Pominville (while he still had 2 years on his contract), and Danny O'Regan to Edmonton for Ryan Nugent Hopkins. I think that's about on par with how the trade went, even though O'Reilly is a better #2 center than RNH.

I have no problem with guys like Larsson and Girgensons being shown the door once we have better players to give their spots to, I just don't see it as a priority. Those guys make (relative) peanuts compared to guys like Sobotka, Bogosian, Okposo, and Pominville and they are typically signed to 1-3 year deals so if some rookie call ups, waiver pick ups, or college free agents push those guys off the depth chart they can easily be put on waivers with minimal cap implications. And until that happens at least they are earning their paychecks more so than the albatross guys.

I didn't advocate for oldies, I just mentioned that the options were not good. I'm sure someone can post a link to all the initial options but from what I remember it was slim pickings. That DJ Kool Song was the only half way decent one of the options and it's 20 years old as well. I'd personally prefer something from the 90's-2000's-ish metal genre (Slayer, Manson, Pantera, System of a Down) that kicks into high gear right away, but that's me. More than anything, I was just letting Swordsman know the fans were able to vote on the decision.

I disagree completely. Paying the bonus certainly impacted the deal if for no other reason than it set an artificial timeline to force the trade when such a timeline should have never existed in the first place because: A) O'Reilly was still under contract for multiple seasons and B) His deal had none of the No Trade Clauses or No Movement Clauses that give a player the power to dictate if he gets traded, where he gets traded, and to whom It was a bad deal (not just in hindsight, it was a bad deal period) and Botterill should have known better. Most of the people on this board knew better and we don't get paid millions of dollars to study the NHL. It's his job to know better and to do better. He failed and there are no excuses that justify it unless he was flat out forced to by ownership.

The fans were considered with the goal song. The fans voted for the current goal song over the one you wanted. They were both options. The fault falls with the Marketing Department or whomever made the initial list because all 12 songs (or however many choices they had to start) were garbage so people were stuck voting for the shiniest turd in the punch bowl.

It's 100% Botterill's fault unless Terry or Kim flat out told him to move O'Reilly out at any cost before his bonus is due or he's fired. Even in that scenario it's his duty to explain to them that he can follow through with their wishes but it's going to hurt the overall talent level on the club, create a huge hole on the roster, and set the competitiveness of the team back, so given the status of his contract the smarter move would have been to wait for the bonus to get paid and boost his trade value. The return on that trade was pure garbage and he got taken to the cleaners.

It's not that they forget how to play, but something is causing the teams who sweep to get overwhelmed the next round. Round 1 Columbus and the Islanders both swept their opponents and both lost in round 2, with the Islanders getting swept themselves Round 2 Carolina swept the Islanders, then got swept in round 3 I just hope the pattern holds.

I would agree. After July 1st an 8 year deal is no longer an option so if Skinner is looking for a max term deal I'd expect him to re-sign here prior to that deadline. If he gets to July 1st I'd bet there's at least one team more attractive than us who will give him big money for 7 years.

Yep. It all hinges on Botterill and whether he can make good deals like the ones that brought in Montour and Skinner or if he'll make bad deals like the ones sending O'Reilly and Kane out the door. I think the Skinner deal fell into his lap so I'm not all that optimistic that he can fill holes with trades without creating even bigger holes elsewhere. I'd like him to prove me wrong although I'd prefer he not trade Ristolainen to do it. I'd love to see Ristolainen treated like a Shattenkirk or other offense first type dman and see how he responds. Ristolainen plays the role of a good soldier who doesn't piss and moan even though he was thrown into the deep end of the pool almost immediately, but his track record shows he's not capable of performing well as a top pairing defenseman. Every coach he's had in the NHL so far has used him that way though. I hope Kreuger is the first to scale back his duties and let him play an easier role.

I will never root for Boston but the silver lining to them winning is the fact that they swept them. Every team that swept their opponent this playoffs has lost in the next round. I hope the Blues/Sharks series goes the full 7 games just to give them that much extra down time so they hopefully come out flat in the finals. The battle of Rust vs Rest definitely seems to be favoring Rust.

I guess you just have more faith in GMJB than I do. I don't have that level of confidence in him. Botterill thought he could replace O'Reilly with some combination of Mittelstadt, Berglund, and Sobotka or other internal guys and that turned out to be a huge mistake so whatever his reasonably priced acquisition is to replace Ristolainen is just going to worsen the talent level even further. I think the best we could even hope for in that scenario is a stay at home d-man who is better than Ristolainen at defending but the odds are that the guy won't have the offense he does and that's fine as long as he can skate and defend. Now it looks like Montour will be fine but has he ever been relied on for first pairing duties? We know Ristolainen struggles with it and should be in a more offensive oriented role, but what happens if HCRK puts Montour on the top pair and he struggles with his defensive assignments? Now you're looking for Ristolainen's bargain bin/value replacement to fill in on the top pair which has the potential to be a disaster.

No worries, man. I guess they could play McCabe on the left and Dahlin on the right which wouldn't be a bad pairing, but I'd cringe to see what the rest of the depth chart would look like in that scenario. Scandella, Nelson, and a bunch of AHL caliber guys I'm guessing.

Do you mean Dahlin? In my scenario Dahlin plays top pair on the left side and with Ristolainen being traded for a bag of magic beans and Montour and Bogosian being on the shelf, I don't know who else would play top pair on the right side.

Do people still want to trade Ristolainen even though that could lead to opening the season with Jake McCabe on his off hand or Casey Nelson on the top pair? I'm sure GMJB would get like 4 middling pieces for Ristolainen including a mediocre center, some cap dumps, and a conditional first round pick that might suit up for the Sabres by the time Eichel is 30.

Was he anointed by GMJB's Daddy or something? I didn't realize we were blessed with royalty. Can he declare war or just annex a #2 center from some other team? I'm sure there's a provision for that listed in the Constitution, the Magna Carta, or the Bible or something.

He taught his players to not use their hands so I imagine we'll see a lot of puck kicking.

I'd rather be the first team to go into a season without a coaching staff than go into the season with Chris Taylor as the bench boss. There are only 31 NHL head coaching jobs in the NHL. If the best they can do is promote a guy who has been a disappointment at a lower level we might as well sleep through next season and start talking about who to draft with our top 4 guaranteed pick.

Exactly. Shame on you, Woody. Don't you know you're supposed to go to Mighty Taco on Cinco de Mayo. Now that's authentic Mexican food.