IKnowPhysics

Ruff was here sixteen years, only won the cup once, and took a cup winner to the bottom of the division standings.

He does that a lot. The qualifier to Peters' statement is that he's Peters. "Grigorenko has elite talent... Stafford is a very good player..." It goes on and on.

Well, at least post the rest of his sentence. "Leino can be elite, I'm not saying he will be, but he can be. He can be a solid two way player." You can bust on Peters for being Peters just about all of the time, with no effort required.

Hockey Prospectus had Minnesota at 22 in the organizational prospect rankings. I'm betting (and hoping) that in this examination, him moving from 3rd to 8th, is an indicator of the strength of our prospect pool. HP is very much by-the-numbers, as can be seen here, where the math behind the individual rankings are explained. Do we have a link to those Hockey News rankings?

$0.02: I think it's a positive thing for hockey to grow as a sport, with a significant metric of growth being number of registered youth and adult amateur players. As of the end of 2012, 511,000 players were registered in the US, only 0.163% of the population (only 16 in every 10000 Americans play hockey!). It's been shown that the existence of NHL teams in non-traditional US markets make a siginificant positive impact on the growth of those numbers. So if sending teams to large TV, yet non-traditional hockey markets in order to gain a quick money grab from ratings and slowly develop a culture of hockey-love and more US players, I'm ok with that. But I'm also a hypocrit. It's garbage that the paper upon which the franchise rights to the Coyotes are printed has been allowed to suffer so long. That team needs to move, preferably to a market that will love and embrace them under a different branding, be it Canadian or Seattlean. Even if a city becomes the new amateur hockey mecca, if the NHL team isn't selling tickets, they need fix their ###### or pack their bags. I do want to tack on that I recognize the importance of quality hockey to these proceedings: the quality and visibility of the hockey in the last Olympics, I believe, helped to grow the sport world wide. It was ###### awesome and I can't wait for more of that.

Messier wants to add a million new hockey players by 2022: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=428951

Toki would be proud.

You're healed!

Concussed as hell -> death metal punk hardcore. Perfect career transition? "Olen niin metallin, minun lääkäri ei anna minun pelata jääkiekkoa!"

Just watched that hit again. That could be it. Asswipe.

Neat. Good retirement to Lydman. Maybe he can go play SM-liiga for a while before he hangs 'em up if he wants to. Or keep playing in Mononen. Say what you will about "deathpunk hardcore," it's good enough for George Parros.

Just ran across that looking up stats for Del. Good read. Here's hoping.

Kind of an in-your-face response, but he's not overstating it. Lidstrom was the balls. With SEVEN Norris trophies, he was a generational talent, like Ray Bourque before him (5x Norris), Bobby Orr before that (8x Norris), Doug Harvey before that (7x Norris), and Eddie Shore before that (4x Hart, before Norris trophy existed). Easily one of the top ten defensemen of all time. My favorite part: He's not an ######. He's a purely class act 100% of time. Always.

For many schools, you're right. Especially those in B1G. And I want UB football to be better and their facilities to be better. But there's a LOT of D1 hockey schools that aren't like that and don't need FBS football to drive the bus. UB could be one of those schools, if they would commit to hockey.

There's actually a lot of insight about the process from that vid, and you can extrapolate/speculate just a little to gather some interesting nuggets and/or put the bigger picture together. Trading: 8th overall to Dallas for 10th overall + _____ - Upon decline, Dallas, drafted Nichushkin at 10th. Devine may have been correct that they would have picked Ristolainen, because they later didn't want to (or maybe were unable to) move up to 9th to take Nichushkin. It's also possible that Dallas was afraid that Buffalo would take Nichushkin, but you'd think they'd maybe try to move up to 9th as well (maybe they did try, unknown). - It's unknown what Dallas offered with the 10th round pick. It's possible, but unlikely, that they offered the 29th overall pick. Could've been the 40th overall or 54th overall. 3rd round pick was 69th. 16th overall to San Jose for 20th overall + 49th overall + _____ - Upon decline, San Jose still wanted to move up to grab a defenseman, and did so by trading 20th overall and 58th overall to Detroit in order to grab Mirco Mueller at 18th overall. That tells me that either had Mueller (unlikely), or some forward (I don't think so, but who knows), at 16th overall, or they saw an opportunity to grab Zadorov as their D pick. "Jimmy wanted to know if we were in or out on this deal." - Only two GMs are named Jim in the NHL, and both are sometimes referred to as Jimmy: Jim Nill (DAL) and Jim Rutherford (CAR). While this line could've been referring to the Dallas offer, it just as easily could've been referring to the trade offer from Carolina for 5th overall to Buffalo for 8th overall and Andrej Sekera. It's speculated elsewhere that Carolina was targeting Sekera from the get go, and Buffalo (later, in the 2nd round) chose to go with the deal they made, Sekera for McBain and 38th overall (JT Compher), when they saw Compher slip down. Picking: Ristolainen. Devine said they'd been watching Ristolainen for two years and had idenitified him as "their guy" and the player most capable of playing in the league right now (this probably isn't comparing him with the top three guys, but guys in the 4th+ overall range), and in this context, he'd had butterflies in his stomach in the days leading up to the draft. - Seth Jones indisputably would not have slipped to 8th overall, but if the Predators pick Ristolainen for some reason, maybe Buffalo would have had to scramble just a little to figure out who "their other guy" is. - It's also within the realm of possibility that given the #5 pick, we still would have picked Ristolainen, but because we expected him to be available at #8, we didn't execute Carolina's initial offer of 5th overall for 8th overall and Sekera. Maybe if Nashville takes Ristolainen, we take that trade with Carolina to get Seth Jones at 5th overall. - As above, it's possible that Ristolainen was desired by Dallas, prompting a trade offer to move back to 10th. Zadorov. They idenitifed Zadorov as a player they wanted that was slipping, at least before the 14th pick. Regier identified him as the player available he thought would have the best NHL career, and chose to take him instead of a forward. Devine referred to as the player that you select if you "want to get tougher to play against." When he was available at 16th, it was "a no brainer." Devine said he would've been shocked to hear that we got both of these guys at 8 and 16. - Haha, it's pretty clear that we didn't give ###### about Wennberg and Pulock.

It's summertime, let's derail the ###### out of this. No they don't. RIT has been initially successful not because they had great facilities, but because they were committed to their program. They hired good people, good coaches, and then later dumped money into capital investments like a new rink and support facilities (like gyms). UB can choose to play hockey, regardless of what the football score was that week- they just have to make that choice and commit to it. Needless to say, it would very much help to have a few major donors; Jeremy Jacobs (UB graduate and regular donor, currently on the UB Council) has been mentioned in the past. Scholarships in D1 are standardized. Every team has 18 full scholarships, but they may break some of those up to be partial scholarships. As there are 26 kids on an NCAA roster, so not everyone gets a full scholarship, and sometimes some don't get anything. From a quick check, there are no D3 hockey programs at schools that are in D1 primary conferences- either it's not allowed or it doesn't make any sense- reader's choice. UB initially would be a good fit for AHA, like RIT, but could eventually (within 15-20 years) push to move to Hockey East. RIT's just about ready (next 5 years) to make a bid for Hockey East. UB, scholastically, could be contend for a bid in a Big Ten (and there's other reason$ why this makes sense for B1G), opening up the door for some really good hockey, but UB football and basketball are light years behind.

Man, Kevin Devine is the ######. We should never let him leave.

Patience. It'll happen.

Not surprising. There's no news to talk about, so folks end up talking about each other.

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Haha, why even pay for a ticket to the game. Awesome.

This thing, almost. Stolen from here: http://blackbluegold.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/buffalo-media-guide-which-player-to-run-out-of-town-nsfw/

If you try to do too much as a defenseman, it gets complicated really fast. Myers simplified his game and he got a lot better towards the end of the season because of it. He was as low as -9 after 11 games, but then in the next 26 games he was +5 (I don't like +/- either, but it illustrates the story). As such, he was rewarded with consistently more ice time. The way he improved last season shows me he could come out and have a great season this year. I hope he does, but it's another line on this team's long laundry list.

Dan Carcillo was a valuable member of the Blackhawks franchise.

When Myers troubles started under Ruff this season, Ruff had him try to simplify his game and focus on defense first before Rolston took over. Rolston picked up that torch and took it farther by telling Myers something along the lines of "I don't care if you don't score again all year. Establish your defensive game." Every coach will have a system, and I expect Rolston to strongly implement one this season starting in training camp. If it didn't look like Rolston had a system, it was probably a result of picking up the team mid-season.