JR Ewing

Exactly. Every coach and every player on every team would feel that way.

-Michkov will be a good player. There's no guarantee he ever leaves Russia, but he will be very very good. -Foeresters: I mean, he's been playing LW. Even then, he's mostly played with Konecny and Couts, and he's not really producing.

I dunno, I really think RW is a need, too. The Flyers are, for starters, very under-sized at the position, lacking offensive pop outside of Konecny, and don't knock me out defensively. 1RW: Konecny - Very good player. 2RW: Atkinson - Getting old and will need to be replaced. 3RW: Tippett - I mentioned him yesterday, and I think he's far from being the answer. Nice release, but doesn't use his linemates at all and is poor defensively. Ideal 3RW, would be poor as a regular 2RW. Brink - on the cusp... If a player hasn't been able to produce much by 21, the odds of him ever doing so are pretty low. Small guys without explosive speed don't usually have notable careers. He's too small to do much if he doesn't work out as a scoring winger, and I don't recall scouting reports or viewings impressing me about his defensive ability. ----- I seem to recall somebody, in the last few days, mentioning that Konecny should be moved to improve other positions. Personally, I think a RW depth chart of Atkinson, Tippett, Brink and 4RW replacement to be terrible, but that's just my opinion.

For what it's worth, Hayes says he had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. https://www.tsn.ca/nhl/kevin-hayes-not-involved-in-cutter-gauthier-s-decision-sounds-off-on-online-backlash-1.2060079

Yes, this is a coaching and deployment issue, because Eakins fed Drysdale to the wolves, making him face elite competition when he was only 19 years. Here are the 10 forwards and defenseman he played the most minutes against in that -26 season: Forward Minutes Anze Kopitar 76 Nathan MacKinnon 50 Trevor Moore 50 Tomas Hertl 46 Jon Marchessault 44 Nicolas Roy 44 William Karlsson 44 Logan Couture 40 Joel Eriksson Ek 37 Connor McDavid 35 Defensemen Minutes Drew Doughty 65 Brent Burns 63 Shea Theodore 55 Matt Roy 54 Olli Maatta 54 Devon Toews 53 Cale Makar 53 Alex Pietrangelo 51 Jared Spurgeon 48 Zach Whitecloud 47

https://www.tsn.ca/nhl/video/why-wouldn-t-you-at-least-return-a-call~2843195

This is where I think that Brier's gamble was a fair one. It's not even that the Flyers reached an impasse with Gauthier because, from what Briere said, the guy wouldn't even so much as talk to the Flyers any more. You can't work out issues with a person who has ghosted you and I think it's also conduct which is beyond unprofessional. Gauthier's return carries caution because of the injury history, but I think he has the ability to become a top-pairing defenseman for the next 10 years, though I don't think he's going to be a huge point producer. That's a hell of a lot more than you get for losing Gauthier for nothing.

I agree 100% and it's why I repeatedly referred to it in my earlier post. Injuries are the biggest thing that will derail a promising young player's career and are never a good thing.

-IF Drysdale can stay healthy (and that's a very fair question at this stage of the game) then Briere has picked up a wonderful prospect with legit 1st-pairing potential. -Sublime skater who distributes well, who would be a big help to the power-play. -Injuries are an issue. -When Drysdale was sitting on the bench, the Ducks get only 39% of the goals. When he's on the ice it's 51% of the goal share. Right now, without factoring in development, he's a player. -He's been hurt a lot so far in his career. -Drysdale's has been paired up mostly with Cam Fowler and, to a lesser extent, Jackson LaCombe. Both had major improvements playing with Drysdale, compared to when they played without him. Scoring Chances with and without Jamie Drysdale Fowler - with: 42.6%, without: 39.6% LaCombe - 43.6%, without: 33.8% -Oh, and injuries are an issue. -Either way, I think Briere has made a strong gamble.

Tippett is 88th in the NHL in goals and 159th in points, doesn't even notice that he has linemates and still hasn't figured out that there are two nets on the ice. He'll be 25 in a month, so we're not talking about a prospect. He won't get you a 1st-round pick, let alone a 1st + a sweetener.

I dunno... I don't think that Auston Matthews, who's tracking to be one of the sport's greatest ever goal scorers, has a bad deal. Dom Luszczyszyn's model at the Athletic sees him as providing $3.8M in surplus value: When his $13.25M contract kicks in, he'll still be a fair bargain. Of the big four, it's the Tavares contract that hurts with respect to providing value. We can all have a conversation about spending all of your big contracts on forwards and leaving little for defense or goaltending, but it's a different talk.

The three most comparable contracts to Nylander's, considering, age, cap hit% and term, and what they had done up to the point in their career when they signed their deals: Corey Perry - who had won a Hart and Richard trophy and had been a key contributor to a Cup winning team. David Pastrnak - also had won a Rocket Richard trophy. Of the 10 most statistically similar players, five are HOFers and the others are guys like Malkin, Stamkos, Jagr, and will be in the HOF later. Nylander isn't in Pasta's class. Jamie Benn - Hart trophy winner. His best production is this season; the first really above 1 PPG, so it's as if he has an established history of high end production, unlike Pastrnak. That shouldn’t get you into the top tier of pay, just in case cap efficiency matters to the team. Treliving should have signed him in the summer or dealt – snookered himself, again. I'm pretty sure that's what Joe Sakic would have done. Different circumstances, but Kevin Cheveldayoff turned Pierre-Luc Dubois into a bounty. Nylander might stay up at this current level, but aging curves tell us his most productive seasons are likely mostly behind him. Another high cap beauty also belongs to the Leafs – Tavares, which is why cheap but effective players like Nzaem Kadri (also later over-paid by this GM) shook loose. Marner also heavy with him at 1.08 PPG this season. At least his career is over 1 PPG. Looks like Matthews Marner and Tavares have full NMCs. None of the 3 known as solid two way players either, as coach Keefe will attest to. They’re done, unless something big and assertive happens. In 2024-2025, they will four forwards at 11M +, 12 signed players (2 top 4 D and no set starting G). Tavares and Marner expire the year after.

Courtesy of http://shiftchart.com/game/2024-01-06-flames-flyers, Risto wasn't benched: Not only was Deslauriers benched for the 3rd; he didn't play after being on the ice for the Weegar goal, at 9:13 of the 2nd period:

I only caught the 3rd period, so I can't say how the rest of the game went... We were just talking about this other day: the Flyers had control of the play until they stopped the forecheck in order to fall back and clog the neutral zone at which point the Flames were able to generate some chances. Sports are about controlling/ dictating the play – asserting your will. Passivity is death in sports. Tennis is the ultimate example of this truth. I can't take watching the sport at all, but football is another great example: prevent defenses usually get shredded for one 10-15 yard gain after another. The offence easily marches the field, with the only salvation for the defence being not enough time for the offence to go the whole way (which is the gamble being made). Hockey may not be quite at that level but it still fits the principle... The best teams are the ones that keep their foot on the throttle, but it's really hard to do.

Yeah, he didn't really even step up in to Bedard; if anything, he let up. The kid just skated into and bounced off of him.

-Not a blindside hit, didn't target the head, or anything like that, and Bedard skated right at him in the middle of the ice and got it. -I'm sure everybody here can remember a time when players were warned to be careful about skating with your head down right where Bedard was when the hit happened. There's not many defensemen in the modern game who hit like that now, and the forwards feel pretty free to go there. -You hate to see it, but he learned a painful lesson.

Hitch never quit with that sort of talk. Certainly a great hockey mind in his time, but had more than a touch of arrogance. When he became Oilers head coach, he said he could fix Jesse Puljujarvi in two weeks. Called him up from the AHL, and within the two weeks Puljujarvi was a healthy scratch once again.

It's a bit of a statistical illusion... Offense has increased the last few years, so if a player is maintaining their production, it's actually slipping. With Couturier, I put it down less to drive and more to him being on the wrong side of 30 in a league increasingly built around speed, and the injuries adding up.

That was my takeaway as well. For my part, I tend to look two things: Scoring Chances Scoring Chances Oilers - 34 Flyers - 26 And from there, I look at Score and Venue Adjusted stats, because when a team gets up by two or more goals, they tend to shoot less and concentrate more on reducing quality chances against, while the trailing team presses for more offense. We've all seen it for years, and the numbers back up the eye test: And so, the Score Adjusted Scoring Chances from last night's game: Oilers - 26 Flyers - 17 It's sort of brought home by Kris Knoblauch's deployment, where he mostly parked 97 once they scored their 5th goal: McDavid had 9 shifts in the first 30 minutes of the game and only 5 in the second half. From there, the Flyers really press for offense while the opposition sits the best player in the world, bringing the shot clock where it ends up, creating a bit of an illusion as to how the game really went as well as the quality of chances created. Stuart Skinner had to be good while Carter Hart was asked to be outstanding. None of this is to kick sand in the Flyers face, because I don't troll, but to talk about how numbers match up to the eye test, which is always interesting.

It's almost as if the Flyers are cheating for defense, if you get my meaning. They have a (rightfully) stern coach when it comes to playing on the right side of the puck and may be abandoning the forecheck to assure they're covered in the neutral zone, which could be the area of work Tortorella was talking about; the balancing of these things.

-Well, tough 3rd period for the Flyers, and McDavid was on top of his stuff tonight, with a 5 point game, the 10th in his career. That makes 31 points in 15 career games against Philly. -Torts had his troops skating hard. I'm 0% trolling when I say this... I think they just ran into a skill deficit at the high end of the roster. -On paper it wouldn't look like it, but I think the Flyers are a good transition team; better than they are at cycling and sustaining pressure. It's surprising, looking at the roster. If they can bring and keep the pressure, they could do some damage. -Both goalies were good tonight, but Hart was facing some really dangerous chances. Plus -I saw Farabee good tonight. Minus -Brink had a tough night.

Much better period for Philly. \

After 20... For the first half of the period, I thought the Flyers showed strong structure. Didn't give a lot of repeated looks, kept a lot to the outside. This changed as the period wore on, so we'll have to see how the 2nd goes. Where the shots came from: Yeah, that's kind of what it looked like on the TV. So far, one team is getting to the middle a lot more.

The McDavid goal is why defensemen should hand-off assignments rather than cross-over.