JR Ewing

As ever, the best moves tend to be the ones that don't get made. Auston Matthews - there was no chance in hell of getting him. I'm pretty sure it was either Toronto or he goes home to Arizona, and that's completely fine for the Flyers. He's a great goal scorer but a bad fit for where Philly is in their rebuild, which is the beginning stages. By the time the group around him would be ready to compete, he'll be moving into the decline phase of his career. Johnny Gaudreau - same as Matthews with respect to age, but worse: he's now entering his decline phase. He's the epitome what the Flyers don't need in their lineup. He's tiny and doesn't defend worth a lick... Did the Flyers a favour, signing with Columbus.

Oh, I'm not criticizing them for deciding on a rebuild; it's the rookie GM and POHO part with which I take issue. The Oilers and Sabres each spent a decade wandering in the wilderness, bringing in one rookie after another and test-fitting men into hockey ops roles when they had nothing on their resumes which indicated that career path. Losing teams have a bad habit of drafting rookies and plugging them into key roles when they're not ready to do it, with predictable results, and doing with management isn't a move you generally see from the best front offices. That's not me saying that it won't work out, but that I don't think it was the absolute smartest bet that the Flyers could have made. ---edit--- I like Keith Jones, by the way, and hope he does well. My guess is that when he cuts himself shaving, he bleeds orange and black.

This is a real thing... After years of managerial incompetence, a sort of PTSD can be bred in the fans, who have come to expect the worst. In this case, any move the club makes is seen as bad, and a certain amount of that is fair. I think the team took unnecessary risk in deciding to rebuild and then hiring rookies for both GM and President of Hockey Ops, particularly in the case of Keith Jones, who's spent the last 20+ years working as a broadcaster. What's done is done, though, and I think it's only fair to wait until clear mistakes are made or moves which are really off the beaten path occur, and I haven't seen that yet.

It's not exactly scintillating hockey so far.

Neither team allowing a lot of clean zone entries so far.

Hell of a shot by Ek. May be offside.

Adam Ruzicka is so stupid, he thinks an innuendo is an Italian suppository.

He's built an incredible program there, to the extent that a number of years ago, I added a whole rule about it. A screenshot from my text file:

Yeah, that's a great goal. He's had a rough go early in his career. He broke his ankle and missed almost all of 2021, so there's a development year down the tubes. The next year, he got sick and was down to under 200 lbs, which is practically skeletal on a guy with his frame. Injuries can and will derail a young player's career, but he's really coming around.

The Leaf have been hurting for a steady goalie since Curtis Joseph left.

Their core is so old that if you lit all the candles on their birthday cakes, it would look like a prairie fire.

I hope it works out for him; I really do. Kid has a great motor and reminds me of Kailer Yamamoto in positive and negative ways. Again; I have my little rules of thumb with hockey, and I know that means nothing, but he ticks some that tend to make me a cautious investor: -Beware of players who really only start putting up a lot of offense in draft +1, because the best ones produce in their draft year. You'll get excited but they usually end up breaking your heart. -Small guys who don't have an elite skill or two (most importantly speed) usually have a tough time in the NHL. Almost to a T, they're very smart and crafty, but the NHL is full of big and dumb guys who can neutralize them. -Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

I mean, we've both seen that argument go both ways whenever it's convenient. Players on strong teams get their sled pulled by the big dogs, too.

The rest of the clip isn't in there, but he went on to say that McDavid needs to be more like Sasha Barkov, essentially saying that McDavid wasn't concerned with his defensive play, which was far from the truth. McDavid's current season as shown by his net rating, courtesy of The Athletic: The next closest is Auston Matthews at 27, MacKinnon at 26, and the rest of the group is bunched up like that, except for McDavid who is far ahead of the field, as usual. Even grumpy old hockey men are starting to suggest that McDavid might be the best player ever; that's the sort of offense he's been creating... If a guy like that is even just average defensively, critics need to find something else to complain about. He's getting as much production as Kucherov, but Kuch is doing it by being abysmal defensively (20th percentile). tldr - I like plenty about him, especially the way he's helping to reshape the culture in Philly, but Torts couldn't be more wrong about this. ---edit--- A range to give context for what a Net Rating of 31 means: 25: Hart calibre-season 20: Typically puts the player among the top 5 in the league. 17: Typically puts the player among the top 10 in the league. 5: Average 1st line player. 0: Average 2nd line player. -4: Average 3rd line player. -7: Average 4th liner. Nathan MacKinnon and Auston Matthews are having Hart-calibre seasons. Their problem is that 97 needs a tougher league to play in.

Yeah. Torts was roasted alive for those comments, and rightly so. Barkov is a hell of a hockey player, but it was just a silly thing to say.

I strongly doubt it. So much has to swing right in these things. You have to draft the right guy AND hope he doesn't get derailed by injuries, etc, etc, etc. Just about the only thing that Denver Barkey has in common with Brayden Point is his size. Point is small but has explosive speed; one of the two or three fastest players in the NHL. I looked up their respective numbers during their respective draft years in junior: Point outscored his next-closest teammate by 35 points. Barkey finshed 3rd in team scoring, 24 points behind the leader. Small guys without a core skill which is elite are destined to be career minor leaguers or, if they catch on for awhile in the NHL, as depth players on league-minimum contracts. Without separation speed or incredible hands or a cannon shot, they're just too easy to neutralize because they're small guys in a big man's sport. If Denver Barkey has a career like Derek Ryan, I would call that a success, given what he has in his toolbox.

@Math @ruxpinI don't like the IOC or the Olympic Committees of the various countries, who use money which could be much better spent than making sure a bunch of rich guys get richer. I don't like the sportswashing that goes on with the Games or the way it's currently being used in other sports like Formula 1. Trust me; I get all of that. All of that aside, I want to see a true best-on-best tournament with the best players in the world, and the NHL's mostly non-involvement has been a bad business decision for a very long time. The World Cup of soccer is also a dubious-at-best scenario with respect to politics, but the various premier leagues around the world see the value in allowing their best players to spend two weeks involved in the highest level of competition, where the NHL always had a "why would we do that?" approach. You don't want to be the biggest representation of the big headline tournament for a global event? Soccer leagues get it; their star player going off somewhere is going to sell jerseys and create interest in their product. After 2008 there were a billion Messi Barcelona jerseys in circulation. That didn't happen by accident. edit - I have to admit that it doesn't bother me to think of how horrified Pierre de Coubertin would be by the presence of pro athletes at the Olympics. Men born into great wealth and position get to take rather convenient positions on topics like this, while others have to feed themselves.

Huge guys who can skate always get the benefit of the doubt.

In the NHL right now, there's not a lot that pop into my head. Mark Giordano, who didn't establish himself until his mid-20s. He's a defenseman, though, so that can change things. Tage Thompson. He has incredible size but never really produced much until he exploded for 68 pts in 78 games when he was 24. Even in Thompson's case, though, he was a 1st round pick, so scouts saw promise.

The NHL has almost always had a very short-sighted approach when it comes to the Olympics. I'm glad to see the players going back.

I think a little bit of just the way it looks. McDavid is smooth and seemingly effortless, while MacKinnon looks like he and his skates are going to war against the ice.

What I know about him: -BIG compete level and work rate. -Short on offensive ability. He ticks a few of my rules of thumb with hockey players: -If he hasn't been able to produce much by 21, the odds of him ever doing so are very low. -Pretty much everyone who is in the AHL past 21 has some issues and may spend time meandering. -Don't get excited about guys who never put up much offense until they were an over-ager in Junior. My guess is that if he has an NHL career, it will be as a plumber in a depth role.

Morgan Frost won't be an offensive star, but he has developed into a fine two-way centre with tremendous defensive ability. I'd keep him around.

The whole show is always good, but I've time-stamped it for Jones' portion.

Jarmo would have been fired years ago if he was in a Canadian market.