JR Ewing

Buffalo - the rebuild has featured an unending litany of rookie GMs who make rookie mistakes over and over again. They are a great example of why I didn't consider Briere to be the strongest possible bet for GM of the Philly rebuild. You don't train ship captains by making sure that their first voyage is in a typhoon. Ottawa - had a terrible owner who interfered at every level. He died in 2022, and the team has only been sold to a new owner less than a year ago. Phoenix - the very definition of the worst sort of ownership possible. They've been reaching the cap floor by taking on LTIR contracts and have been forced to pre-pay for hotels and flights. Competing hasn't possible, regardless of rebuilds. Toronto - strong team, but the rebuild was hampered by mostly drafting wingers, and then Kyle Dubas signing John Tavares to his massive deal. Dubas was forced to move quality depth pieces (like Nazem Kadri) on value contracts, and the team has been trying to plug those holes since that time.

No, I'll stand by that. The Isles were bad, but their goal differential was "only" -17. Both are weak playoff teams, but you have to go back decades to find a team in the playoffs that gave up so much more than they got, and there's a linear relationship between goal differential and winning.

Any guy whose game plan starts with "All you have to do stop McDavid is..." really talking out of his a$$. Confidence is what you have when you don't understand the problem.

Bobby "The Brain" Heenan had one that always made me laugh: "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge and some just gargle". I know there's no way that he made it up, but it's still funny.

This guy's tweet makes no sense... He comments on an executive slagging the pairing that handily led the NHL in xGoal% by noting that the Nurse/Ceci pairing, which finished 8th in the league, is dogshit. I get that it's twitter, and land of the trolls and imbeciles, but still...

I agree. I'm saying that the smart teams, like Chicago, plan this sort of thing out when they see the right player come along.

No, though the rebuild was materially hurt by Peter Chiarelli's blunders. -The Milan Lucic free agent signing in 2017.. They got out of by trading Lucic for James Neal and then buying him out. It was the right trade for Ken Holland to make, since it allowed them to sign Zach Hyman. The dead cap from all of this is one will expire after next season. -The Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson trade. Larsson is a good defender, but not worth nearly Hall. -1st and 2nd round picks for Griffin Reinhart. The Isles probably laughed themselves to death when they completed the deal. -The next series of trades almost requires an essay of its own... The Old Boys Club were livid when Jordan Eberle ducked a hit in the 2017 playoffs, so they wanted him gone, dealing him for Ryan Strome, and then dealt Strome to the Rangers for one of the softest players in the history of the game, Ryan Spooner. In turn, Chiarelli deal Spooner to Vancouver for Sam Gagner. In one of the worst examples of asset management you can imagine, Chiarelli turned Jordan and Sam Gagner into Sam Gagner. -And then, because life can be unfair, half of the Oilers blueline was carved out almost in an instant: Andrej Sekera tore his Achilles tendon and was finished as a player. Oscar Klefbom developed arthritis which was so serious that he had to retire at only 26. Adam Larsson's father died across the street from the arena in Edmonton, and Larsson couldn't bear to play there anymore, walking/signing in Seattle. It's all a long way of saying that you're 100 percent correct, and that there are no guarantees with this, even if you do things right. The draft is the way to do it; absolutely.

Yes, it's not just a matter of luck with rebuilds, but a matter of timing, and the right player is usually evident over a year from the draft, and sometimes earlier than that, in extreme cases like McDavid, and a few other kids granted exceptional status. I caught this show with the Oilers, who picked #1 with Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov. Hall was skilled but interested only in himself, and Nugent-Hopkins is a very good all around player, but not a cornerstone. Then they picked Yakupov, who's so infuriating, that Brian Burke had to physically restrain one of his scouts from attacking the kid at the pre-draft interview. It was only when they fluked their way to a lotto win with Connor McDavid that the right player came along.

I think I'd rather face the Golden Knights in the first round, so that Stone et al, don't have as many at bats to loosen up as the playoffs continue. There are very few easy match-ups anymore, so you take what you're given, I suppose.

You're right. This draft isn't loaded with exciting centre depth, and there's precious little in the #12 range (+/-3 spots).

So much (good and bad) flows downhill from your best player. Auston Matthews, at his size, getting badly bullied by Steve Stamkos a couple of years ago, was embarrassing. Two things need to improve for the Leafs to make much noise: -Matthews needs to improve his playoff performance. So far, his offense has dropped a lot from his regular season standard, and he has to become more hard-nosed. -The Leafs need to improve defensively. Only one playoff team gave up more high danger chances this year.

I'm not saying that small players can't be good. I'll definitely say that small teams can't be, particularly in the playoffs, when the refs drop any pretense of calling the rulebook. ??? I didn't suggest that the Flyers shouldn't trade for a player, though I do think it's the best avenue to take in a rebuild. Trade all you like, but make the right trades. I get it; you're spitballing. There's nothing wrong with that.

Another small player?

A friend of mine texted me a couple of days ago and said "Watch them name themselves something stupid like 'Hockey Club'".

https://media.giphy.com/media/LyJ6KPlrFdKnK/giphy.gif?cid=790b7611l7yxqe2tjpjr4w66rkslghflhvmzmvvsyrcn0hp0&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=ghttps://media.giphy.com/media/LyJ6KPlrFdKnK/giphy.gif?cid=790b7611l7yxqe2tjpjr4w66rkslghflhvmzmvvsyrcn0hp0&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g https://media.giphy.com/media/LyJ6KPlrFdKnK/giphy.gif?cid=790b7611l7yxqe2tjpjr4w66rkslghflhvmzmvvsyrcn0hp0&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g

As far as I can tell, the 2024 Caps are the worst playoff team of the salary cap era. Most years, there's a playoff team with a goal differential of something in the territory of -5 to -15 at worst. The Caps are -37. edit - only now do I see @SaucyJack had mentioned the same thing. I'll stop backtracking through Hockey Reference. lol

Drysdale's had one season in his last five where he was healthy, and Jiricek has had one season in his last five where he was injured.

I agree with all of that, but for the proviso that you can cast a net wider than the return needing to match something close to the draft position.

He was never destined to be a minute munching #1, because he's too small and isn't strong defensively... For me, the big question with the trade was Drysdale's ability to stay healthy. He's only played one full season since 2019, his first year with Erie, and it's just not tracking well. What surprised me was Briere, with a smaller team, gambling with an under-sized defenseman. He's not heavy and doesn't have the wingspan you'd like to see.

-Tippett: I like Tippett as a shooter in the slot, but the problem with that is that the bumper position needs a guy who can facilitate for his teammates as well as shoot, and he's very ill-suited for that. He gets a puck, he shoots a puck. Braydon Point is a terrific bumper because he can shoot and pass. -Mullen PP: what; an over-load, with two defensemen/shooters at the point? That system is as dead as disco, and for good reason. As teams abandoned it one by one, in favour of the 1-3-1, team PP% kept increasing across the NHL. You could put Al MacInnis there, and that PP wouldn't produce enough today. The only reason to shoot from the point is to keep the defenders honest; not to generate chances. I guess this is a spot where we disagree. I don't see viable/high end talent on that PP, and I think that's why it's so bad. I was curious about the same thing.

@BobbyClarkeFan16 I really like your post, and it did make me curious. I went and combed through highlights of power-plays from the last 15ish games, and I have to say that I'm not so sure it's about how bad Rocky Thompson is as a coach. I saw a bog-standard 1-3-1 from the Flyers PP, so it's not like he has them doing something very different than what it is the most commonly-used system. What I did see: -Owen Tippett wasting shot after shot, no matter if there were defender blocking the lanes, and whether or not there was a net-front to bang in a rebound on the off-chance the shot actually gets through. Honestly, I think that the PP doesn't lend itself nearly as well to his skillset as does even-strength, where he generates chances with his speed through the neutral zone. -Morgan Frost getting out-muscled and out-reached in board battles. -Bobby Brink getting out-muscled and out-reached in board battles. -Jamie Drysdale. Another guy under 6 feet tall and 185 lbs. -Sean Couturier, who has the size but not the feet. This is a mostly short and underweight group who wouldn't be getting 1st unit PP minutes on good teams. Size without skill is a total waste, but skill without size places limitations on matchups and roster building. Small players can be effective, but small teams (or in this case, special teams groups) are too easy to neutralize.

I guess I have a very different view from many (everybody else?) around here. I don't see the need to trade Konecny, and I think that people who are hoping for a strong young scorer or a potential starting goaltender would be very underwhelmed by the return. As ever, I go back to Al Arbour (who forgot more about hockey than I'll ever know), with his opinion on team building: "It's no secret; it's not complicated. Get good players." Travis Konecny is a good player, and if the rebuild is in a good position in five years, he will only be 32. Serious injuries aside, he can be more than useful at that age, and despite what a lot of people think a rebuild constitutes, I don't think it's a good idea to shed literally every good player from the roster, as respected veterans have value. This is just my view as a fan of a team that was forced to trade primed-aged players in favour of prospects and picks. It mostly doesn't work out and it just keeps the rebuild going perpetually.

Gretzky scored #894 in his 1,477th game played. 1. Figuring it out was very easy: I went to his profile at Hockey Reference: https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/g/gretzwa01.html 2. Saw that he came into his last season with 1,415 GP. 3. Brought up his gamelog from his final season: https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/g/gretzwa01/gamelog/1999 4. Goal #894 came in his 62nd game of the year. 5. 1415 + 62 = 1477

Come on; you know that's not what I said. Yeah, it would have been close. The Sabres had a Pts% of .556 with Quinn in the lineup, which equates to around 91 points in the standings, like the Red Wings. The Caps and Red Wings were really only in the playoff hunt more for the types of losses they had than the wins they were getting. Would have been closer, though.

It's almost as if Buffalo's management isn't amazing at assessing talent.