WildCard

Reddit popular vote has us at 13, which seems about right to me

Stan Lee passes away at 95

Good point

Keep in mind we have a few blowout losses and a few blowout wins. Also, last year, we lost an absurd amount of 1 goal games. We're winning those this year

Neither. Well, I guess both? But he's currently slow and meh now, and he's not going to get any faster

Lot of it depends on Olofsson and Okposo. I'd rather not go into the season with those as our primary options for the middle lines. Little too much uncertainty for me

Same. I think he slows that line down way too much. Without spacing apart Reinhart to divvy the talent up, man it is so painstakingly apparent how poor our RWs are. Our main hope for next year is that Olofsson becomes something. And even then, that's really just replacing/upgrading Pomminstein. Hard to believe Botts enters next year without upgrading that

Think a lot of it has to do with how confident Botts feels with the talent that will come up from Rochester next year. Are Smith, Olofsson, Pilut, Guhle, and Nylander all going to be ready, and effective, by next September?

Lehner being a dck, Kane partying, RoR being depressed. I'd say that about sums it up

God dammit Flagg, of course you knew that. ? I honestly thought he had 30g and 70 points, what with him asking for 8M per and turning down a Pasternak deal of $40M/6 years

Anderson is a good vet to learn from. Keep him

Without looking, how many goals/points do you think William Nylander had last season?

We still desperately need offense, especially goals, from anyone not named Jeff Skinner.

I think Skinner is much better than Kane on the ice.

There was 2s left in half lol what else was Bowlee supposed to do

Maple Leafs win

I edited my previous post for accurate math, but still the only reason he didn't was because like True says, the cap circumventing rules. He tacked on an extra 3 years at 3M/year at the end. Take that away and his 12 year, 104M deal becomes 9 years, 95M. And then the cap hit is 10.6M. Much different; from 12.4% to 15.1%

Letang and Kessel don't cost that much, all things considered. Kessel really is a steal at 6.8M. We're going to have to pay Dahlin 9M+ I'd bet. And Skinner 8M+. And Mitts, when his time comes, around 8M+ too. Pittsburgh has been so good for so long because of the cheap, young talent they have that comes up and replaces expensive ones, and their ability to find talent other teams can't utilize and, well, perfect them (Murray for Fleury, Guentzel, turning around Schultz, replacing Perron with Hagelin, using Kessel correctly, etc.) That too. Crosby's deal is 12 freaking years

Crosby signed his deal in 2013 with an $8.7M cap hit. The cap for that season was $70.2M. So he accounted for 12.4% of the cap McDavid accounts for 15.7% (12.5/79.5)*100 Malkin signed his deal for 9.5M cap hit in 2014, when the cap was 69M. Malkin accounted for 15.7% Edit: Massive edit because I'm hungover and can't handle simple math right now