Curt

Yeah, sure. Sabres should be better too but I’m not sure if it will be to the same degree as Ottawa. Them adding a legit top 6 C and top 4 D is tough to match. Losing Quinn hurts.

Have you watched Black Mirror (on Netflix). Similar format, sci-fi, each episode an independent story under 1 hour. It’s very high quality.

Probably correct, but they have no way of knowing for sure yet.

Waiting for Dahlin to return to Buffalo for the in person signing photo ops and interviews/press conference.

Losing Norris for 74 games was a big blow for them last season. They didn’t have their 1C coming off a 35 goal season for basically the whole season. Also, Chychrun. They added him but he only played 12 games for them. Hard to imagine he will play close to a full season, but I’d imagine they will have him for 50 games this season. So they are also adding a top 6 C and a top-4 D to their lineup, and they should get continued development improvements from some young guys. They should be improved over last season..

If Adams was still trying to move up to 11 when Canucks were on the clock (after 10th pick had already been made) then the only possible targets were Tom Willander, Danil But, or Zach Benson.

Similar to what the Sabres did with Hall.

I would! (I think, it’s very close). Lafreniere isn’t a bust.

Chat GPT will take over and write scripts just as good. 😉

Well, there are sometimes annoying delays in the release of series shows like that. But with Mayor of Kingstown, the delay is completely understandable. In January, Jeremy Renner, the star of the series ran himself over with a 14,000 lb snowcat plow and broke like every bone in his body. He almost died. He wasn’t quite up for filming this year. Covid shutdowns also were a huge issue that affected filming the past couple years and caused an abnormal number of delays. I wouldn’t expect that to be as common going forward.

Thoughts?

That’s what I’m thinking about. I have a hard time projecting them to miss the playoffs, but how far can you get with a C group of Pavel Zacha, Charlie Coyle and Morgan Geekie?

I don’t know what a Mark Twain like recovery is. Bruins have recovered from what the past 5 years? Only big change for them in that time was Chara leaving. The thing that makes the current Boston team different than their past 15 years is that they have always had good players under 25 coming through their team to replenish, and they simply don’t have that right now. There is no help coming up. Do you honestly thing they are just going to keep chugging along, winning 50 games a year? Go look at their actual team.

With Bergeron and Krejci gone, how much are we thinking that the Bruins crater next season?

Didn’t see it noted anywhere here, but owner of the Blackhawks, Rocky Wirtz, passed away at 70.

He wrote actual because he was clarifying his earlier tweet where he said it would be in the $1.6M range.

It’s not really 10% though, because a guy making $5M doesn’t take home $5M. He takes home like $3M, and maybe $3.5M in a tax friendly state. So maybe more like 15%. But anyway, yeah, there are lots of different reasons that people take jobs. An NHL job is not quite the same as your job though. Not all 10%’s are created equal. A 10% that is $500k is much different from a 10% that is 10k. Yeah sure, they are both 10% but you can do a lot more with 500k than you can with 10k. Or over a 5 year contract, big difference between $2.5M and $50k.

Players themselves have come out and said that the tax differences between certain situations can result in a savings of nearly 500k on a large contract ($5M+). It’s not an insignificant difference to the players.

Random question: Excluding the Bills and Chiefs, what 3 teams do you think are set up to have the most success over the next 5-10 years?

Crosby took under market value for basically his whole career. He was the best player in the league and instead of taking a deal that reflected that, he signed a deal that was just kind of on par with the other top 5-10 players in the league. I can’t imagine anything too extreme, but I could see McDavid doing something similar. You know that guy must really want to win. I could see him taking around a 15% cap hit, to be right around the other few highest payed players, instead of pushing for something like 18%, which would almost definitely make him the top paid guy. That’s the difference between ~$14M and ~$17M.

Just thinking about McDavid’s next contract. What is he going to get? He could justifiably get 17-18% of the cap, which will probably be around $95M at that point. That’s a $16-17M cap hit. Will he go for that? Or will he take less to try to win a Cup?

Let’s Go Norwin!

Yeah, Matthews will probably sign for more than McDavid or MacKinnon but maybe less in terms of cap %. Year from now cap will probably go up to like $88M maybe. 15% of that would be just over $13M. I don’t really see how Matthews will get any significant raise from his previous contract in terms of cap %. I think it’s nuts what the Leafs gave him on his current deal.

The max? No one is paying him the salary maximum.

How much money do you think Matthews makes in advertising/spokesperson income in Toronto? How much do you think he would make in Arizona?