Thorner

I’ve found that to be perhaps a function of how much he’s speaking to the refs - and it sort of ties into a discussion I saw in another thread about how Crosby was disliked coming into league - there’s often an intangible bias against younger players. But if Dahlin actually *had* the C that comes with veteranship, I bet the refs mind all the yakking less

Hey, Mark Scheifele got 8.5 x 8 based on this principle

It’s a definite déjà vu feeling looking, year over year. Obvious Benson exception. I understand the aim for continuity - should be fascinating to see how it all unfolds

Did the 05-06 team have a hall of famer?

Chad has been pretty balanced

Who knows. If I had a guess: not likely, because the fact of the matter is, that move would require a GM who’s reasonably patient and deliberate at the most frantic of times to make a move at a time when the market is calm

Fittingly, I can disagree with your post. I missed every flower, and the garden itself. this place deserves a better class of thorn, and I’m gonna give it to em

ftfy cheers dude I missed you

Yep. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again f*ck the Chicago blackhawks thats it

Thanks, chief I missed you

Hellebuyck isn’t weak in those areas compared to others, weird misnomer I’ve noticed around here. He’s well above average. Those are merely the areas he isn’t elite in. Ie he’s elite in most areas but only quite good in a couple. it would be pretty odd to not add Hellebuyck for this specific reason because the only goalies that wouldn’t struggle mightily in those areas are the count-on-one-hand other elite goalies. It would be sort of weird to gameplan to have these terrible defensive deficiencies for the course of an 8 year term. It doesn’t matter who we have in net if we don’t fix the issues.

He can be right, less wrong is fine by me if we make the playoffs

I’ve seen Eichel with a 200 ft game (so, current Jack Eichel) mentioned, as well as Wayne Gretzky mentioned a couple times.. maybe we get lucky for once and he ends up somewhere, while I won’t say in the “middle”, somewhere in between the two To me I kind of see Brayden Point

By all means continue linking players with better defence and better offence

His d doesn’t fit in with the Usual Suspects though it’s more x-men origins: Wolverine out there in the defensive zone. in all honesty I wager to say the Days of him being the Future are Past

I certainly think the Hellebuyck contract makes a ton of sense in that context. Especially because the Jets, given their market, aren’t a team that I believe thinks they can risk LT rebuilds, definitely not lightly, but maybe not...at all? Maybe one per GM? But they’ve only had one GM. These extensions represent doubling down again on their OG core from 12 years ago. It’s somewhat frightening and somewhat.. exceptionally respectable. make no mistake, this is their “we want guys who want to be here”, see, look at these long term guys doubling down to stay. For Chevy a triumphant “SEE, Wheeler was wolf in the hen house, and he’s gone now.” Sticking point for me is is my anti-Scheifele bias. Whereas I believe Hellebuyck to be probably elite, I’m not convinced Scheifele is good

Hellebuyck contract is ok, that Scheifele contract to a 30+ skater is kinda yikes. Might end up balancing out the steal they had with his first several years under contact. His defence isn’t bad, so much as it’s atrocious. My eye test where Scheifele is concerned is of course bountiful but there’s also this

Not worried, just interested. Some house cleaning, for my part, on Ullmark before we can hopefully leave that in the past because Levi demands it so: Adams failure re ullmark, to this point, was two fold: A) failing to sign him B) not having an adequate backup plan after making that choice The key point I’d raise in this context is that an asset being overpaid as determined by *market value* isn’t the same thing as an asset being overpaid by true value, ie, value to one specific team. Just because the market may have said that we’d have to slightly “overpay” to keep Linus, doesn’t mean it’s an *actual* overpay re: value to our team. The goal of a successful team of course supersedes the evaluation of any one move by way of market in a vacuum. Particularly, particularly, if there is no viable backup plan, failing option A. What good is coming out “right” by the market and declining on Ullmark, if the detriment for failing to do so to your actual team is a greater negative? That’s winning battle and losing the war. That’s prioritizing a desire to never “lose” a single move in a vacuum, over the net result. It’s an imbalance of priorities. In short, KA didn’t have to pay Linus, but paying him was certainly the lesser of two evils IF the other option was failing to adequately address the position. That’s not hindsight: If KA *knew* the goaltending output would be significantly dented he made the incorrect choice, and if he didn’t, “well, I thought I could adequately replace him” isn’t an argument at all if you don’t actually do it. Every GM *thinks* they are making the correct decisions by the prism of the moment - unfortunately for them they get evaluated based on what actually happens. Merely the output Ullmark provided in Buffalo, not what he’d go on to do in Boston, represented a significantly higher degree of aptitude from what we’ve seen since at the position (again, at least until Levi) By the same token, it won’t matter that at the time we were all disappointed in our rostered backup goalies if UPL or Comrie emerge to provide adequate backup output this season - Adams would be due proper credit for the result he achieved.

This would be an insane amount of games on tv for us schwing!

By popular demand, this will be my last post cheers

I like it but I think I need Dahlin leading in ES minutes, one way or another

It was easier for me to live with considering we already went through Dahlin finishing 3rd during his, more remarkable, rookie season. A big take away for me re: ice time is how clearly Dahlin cements his case as our MVP. He’s playing 7 minutes more a game than Tage, 39% (!) more. Dahlin is also the better playmaker. He’s the best on our team and he makes passes most nhlers don’t or can’t. I always associate playmaking in a big way with vision, so whether or not vision gets lumped in with IQ I guess determines who id say has the better IQ. At least, “offensive awareness”, to borrow an EA NHL category

Other than the fact that I’ve said continuously that I think there’s a very reasonable chance our goaltending works out fine this season. Which is a stance I believe you share? Like I said, you want to paint some sort of disagreement on the extremes and it’s just not there. They actually do intersect quite a bit, that was my original point. I apparently can not convince you of this intersection so I can subscribe to your opening sentence

Right ok. I always think of Samuelsson stapled to Dahlin’s hip but I guess that wasn’t always the case