J0e Th0rnton

Patrick roy sure has done a hell of a job instilling confidence into that young team.

I hate the guy, but so far, his team has impressed.

Imagine if years from now, Roy is regarded as one of the great coaches!

DESTROY ALL HABS!!!

That's for you JL!

@Habsterix

Every time there Is a goal scored against us you are on the ice every freaking time!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!!!! Thanks for deflecting the puck into your own net ass wipe. I do not know how many times I have said it on this forum but Coburn is on the ice every freaking time!!!

Rofl. This post was great

If you're gonna make a dumb rule such as that, why not require the players to leave their gloves on?  

 

That way, you won't hurt your fist if you punch a helmet. 

Mostly because punching with a hockey glove is akin to hitting someone with a brick. Those gloves are haaard

heck yeah. Was incredible

hahahahaha.

How many games is he going to get? Boyle was out COLD. Hit to the numbers and drilled his chin into the ledge ala Claude Lemieux/draper

Rofl. Yeah I remember that one haha

Most significant goalie own goal ever.

Then again, Mark Andre Fleury's team Canada own goal was pretty epic too.

lol...thx Joe, no I did not see that one...but nothing, really nothing, beats scoring on your own net....in YOUR power play!  Worst own goal of our franchise.... :blink:  

I dunno. Jeremy Roenick's 500th goal was a pretty epic own goal by auld.

@bunnyman  Haha...that's funny cuz this afternoon I was seriously, SERIOUSLY thinking about switching it up on my avatar today!!  I honestly can't see ANY of the elite goalies making that mistake Lu made last nite...to me he's the netminder, which means, you keep your eyes on the puck at ALL times, no matter WHO has the puck!!  Unbelievable. I'm giving it some serious thought. Maybe watch for my change-up coming your way.....!  

heh, you should see the 5 hole wraparound goal Emery let in vs the wings

Then again, he is not elite.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/oates-hertls-goal-disrespects-game-231517159--nhl.html

 

That was a joy to watch.  I can not believe what Oates said. 

I laughed a lot at Joe Thornton's coming to the rescue comments ragarding stroking the rooster haha

Coasting gets you nowhere.

The Shame is, he had a lot of talent.

how many freaking people would sit on their hands like he did in his place. if I was told I have a chance to make millions of dollars to play hockey, you can bet i would flat out bring it every game, practice and in attitude.

i always approach my job in such a manner.

How many of you saw Wayne Gretzky play for the Oilers? Do you know a guy by the name of Dave Semenko? Or I'm sure you've heard of Marty McSorley, right? I'm assuming that many of you know that it was Gretzky who asked Bruce McNall, then Kings' owner, to trade for McSorley back then, right? Yet, the fact is that if Gretzky managed to have such a long and successful career, it was because of guys who would impose respect. Players knew that they hit the Great One (let alone cheapshot him), there would be trouble.

 

So let's stop the excuses of "hating fights after a legal hit" crap. If your star player gets hit, someone better darn well jump and kick the crap out of the culprit who dared doing it... legal or not! As that's the guy who will make you win, or lose if he's hurt!

 

I fully agree with yave1964 about how dumb the instigator rule is, as we know it. Take fighting out of the game and I swear that this league will be infested by rats, as Brian Burke and Don Cherry have often said. The league has proven over, and over, and over again that it cannot regulate everything, Same goes for the referees on the ice as the refereeing is as bad as it's ever been since they've brought a second judgment on the ice after the lockout of 2005. How much proof does one need, really, to understand that the players need to be able to hold each other accountable for their action? There's no fighting in other sports? Fine, watch them! I do. But I love my NHL hockey more than the IIHF and part of it is the fighting aspect. Looking at pools on hockey forums, it seems like the majority of fans think that way as well.

 

So Yzerman, you want to ride on your high horse and forget how you managed to have a good career? You want to ignore your good buddy Bob Probert? I say to you: hypocrite!

Hey. I am with you Joce, but the way the wind is blowing......

The NHL seemed more concerned with image than the game when they put in that dumb instigator rule. it opened the door for a million Ulf Samuelsson's

Edler suspended the same amount for his headshot on Hertl

I wrote before the season started in the prediction thread to watch or Hertl to be a rookie of the year finalist

There's a problem with making fighting a game misconduct in that you'll get coaches sending goons out to try and force star players to fight. You see it happen already with it being a 5 minute penalty. I think you'd also just see fighting put off until the end of games where a game misconduct doesn't make as much of an impact.

 

I think end game solution will be to ban fighting all together, just like any other team sport. 

I used to hate this idea as a fan of Hockey before the old instigator rule, but I am kind of falling into this mindset now. Fighting no longer serves the purpose it once did, and is in fact usually a sideshow with enforcers fighting enforcers for no reason other than to fire the team up, or the targetting of star players by goons to get them off the ice.

Brent Burns has been a quasi-star player for the Minnesota Wild and the San Jose Sharks, an offensive defenseman who has holes in his game on the blue line that he makes up for with his size and his ability to move and fire the puck. Essentially halfway through his career, he is being moved to forward, playing the Wing where he will be a six foot five behemoth and the hope is he will be able to adjust to the forward role and take advantage of his obvious skills and hide his glaring weaknesses.

He excelled down the stretch with the position change last year, a true power forward, a giant forward playing mostly with Joe Thornton for the final 23 games, he had 9 goals and 11 assists for a total of 20 points in 23 games. He has been moved up to forward on occasion throughout his career and this seems to be a natural move for him. A monstrous power forward with a snarl and the willingness to crash the net seems to have been a natural match with Joe Thornton. Slick passing to a big body out front who is impossible to move seems ideal.

Mid career position switches for stars or near stars are rare, Red Kelly, a hall of fame defenseman for the Wings who finished his career with eight sterling seasons playing center for the Leafs comes to mind as the ultimate example. Kelly, who won eight cups (the most of any Non Montreal Canadien) had played a little forward in a pinch for the Wings was coming off a severely broken ankle with the Wings which robbed him of a lot of his maneuverability used his hockey IQ to star with the Leafs Dynasty that ushered out the original six era. Others have done it Ken Houston not a star but a hell of a hockey player with the Flames bounced between forward and defense in the seventies and early eighties, it is rare that it has any long term success but I have felt for a long time that Burns was a man out of position and give the brain trust in San Jose credit for seeing it and giving him this opportunity.

heh. I have liked what i have seen so far. Hertl being on that line is going to improve it as well. Hertl has been playing very well so far

2 goals and an assist for hertl in the first 2 games!!

The Sharks seem to have similar problems

Tmac for SJ if they get off to a bad start 

Hertl or Nieti will be candidates for rookie of the year

My own vote went top option #3. The code basically boils down to "we need enforcers top stop the dirty crap from being in the game. However, enforcers may only fight other enforcers, even if the other guy hasn't been doing any of the dirty stuff. As such let's just have the goons fight other goons after faceoffs."

 

JR

The code does not exist anymore.

It did long ago, but the instigator and the upbringing of players really made it go away.

Back in the day, an enforcer would go after a guy for intentionally spearing Yzerman, or slashing Gretzky, etc, and often you would see the other team get the message and back off when they saw probert or Semenko skating on the ice with that look. It often opened up a lot of space for the superstars.

But few are afraid of a little scrap these days.

Mind you, a goon like that has no business targetting a tiny skill player unless Kessel did something I did not see.

 

Just read this over at Sportsnet forum.......a lot of Leaf fans cannot stand Damien, me I like him!

 

Maple Leafs: Kadri signs, but relationship far from cozy

Maple Leafs and Nazem Kadri have awkward relationship that isn't getting any better, despite two year deal in place

 

By: Damien Cox Sports Columnist, Published on Wed Sep 11 2013

 

From Damien Cox’s blog The Spin.

 

Of course Nazem Kadri caved.

 

Then again, he’s just received a 75 per cent pay increase and at the tender age of 22 will earn $2.9 million this season as the second line centre for the Maple Leafs.

 

May we all “cave” at work today in such fashion.

 

Yes, Kadri wanted more, a lot more, with many more zeroes and more than a two-year commitment. Something in the neighborhood of John Tavares’ deal with the Islanders, six years and $33 million.

 

After one lockout-shortened season, it’s hard to say whether his demands were delusional and the product of an inexperienced agent, or perhaps a canny play to set the bar unreasonably high and then settle for a “bridge” contract that’s a little richer than most have been involving similar players.

 

Maybe it will impact similar contractual disputes between the Rangers and Derek Stepan and Buffalo and Cody Hodgson, maybe it won’t.

 

Aside from the financial implications, however, there’s a larger story here, and it’s that the relationship between Kadri and the Leafs continues to be fractious. Prickly. Contentious.

 

Pick whatever word you like. But this player and this team remain anything but on the same page.

 

It’s been that way almost since the day Kadri was made a first round pick by Brian Burke, and continues to be so.

 

The team has never been impressed with his commitment to fitness, or lack thereof, which one might think is a basic for elite NHLers. Kadri has pushed back - although, to his credit, never with angry public comments - and received counter-productive support from media types who never see him practice or play but want to tell the world the Leafs are being mean to him.

 

If anything, Kadri is one of the rare examples of a top prospect being intelligently and patiently developed by the Leafs, a franchise that has traditionally rushed and wrecked young players.

 

For that approach with Kadri, the team has been criticized in some corners for unreasonably holding him back.

 

There’s been internal concern about his “lifestyle” and friends. Kadri, for his part, insists he’s done everything that’s been asked of him along the way, which is sort of true and sort of not true. It’s not just been him butting heads with one Leaf figure; in succession Burke, Ron Wilson, Dallas Eakins, Dave Nonis and Randy Carlyle have all found Kadri lacking in terms of professionalism and performance.

 

Other players call him “The Dream” in the Leaf dressing room, and not necessarily in a complimentary way. He took all kinds of ribbing in recent weeks from his teammates for his exorbitant salary demands, and he couldn’t stop himself from publicly insisting he was being “fair” in what he was asking for, which implied his employer was not being fair.

 

So now he’s signed for two years, and now we’ll see if he can back up his self-belief with performance. He’s made it all about points, which means he will be judged by the points he can produce. If he can’t continue at the pace he set last season, Lord knows there will be enough people out there who will scream the team isn’t giving him the proper opportunity, as was the case with Mikhail Grabovski.

 

Which brings us to the truly salient point here; like Grabovski, it’s hard to see this marriage between Kadri and the Leafs being a long-term arrangement.

Even Kadri’s tweet last night after signing seemed muted, measured and anything but celebratory:

 

“Happy to be with leafs for next couple years, looking forward to camp #leafnation #best nation”

 

The Leafs have bought themselves two years to see what they’ve really got in this talented offensive player. But can you really see this player-team relationship going on much longer than that?

 

He might be the most talented offensive player the Leafs have drafted since Vincent Damphousse in ‘86. Or at least since Brad Boyes in 2000.

But Kadri and the Leafs are like bone rubbing against bone right now. The only former top Leaf pick with a similarly problematic relationship with the team who comes to mind would be Al Iafrate, who struggled under a weak organization and with his own insecurities and only truly blossomed after he left Toronto.

 

Iafrate never believed that the team appreciated him, at least not as much as others. You sure get that feeling with Kadri.

 

If Kadri succeeds under this contract, it’ll be with vindication in his heart and massive financial demands, regardless of how the team does. If he doesn’t, this contract fight will resume in two years, and it’ll be nastier, this time with Kadri armed with arbitration rights.

 

The likeliest scenario? Sometime in the next 2-4 years, Kadri will moved elsewhere in the same way Boston moved Tyler Seguin this summer. The Leafs, in calculating fashion, will extract what they can from Kadri’s abilities, then move him for maximum value to another team.

 

It’s not written in stone that way. But a great deal would have to change for this to become a happier, long term relationship.

Sometimes players and teams just don’t fit.

 

Kadri and the Leafs are like a Christmas morning sweater two sizes too small.

 

Uncomfortable.

 

In the case of grabs, I think they had a point.

This contract works. Short term, let's see if he can bring it

No matter how that rule is written, it will always remain a grey area. You won't find two people interpreting some hits the same way.

Agreed.

Usually it becomes a battle between fanbases.

Thornton's suspension over his hit on perron a few years ago made me wonder why this is even a contact sport anymore. He never really laid into him or put his weight behind the hit, but he was tall so boom, headshot. Perron was skating right at him, but looking for that suicide pass.