Around the League 2019-2024 Edition
- Thread starter LeafGm
- Start date
hockeylover
Well-known member
It'd be pretty funny if they got bent over for Gavrikov as was the rumour and missed anyway.
Habsy
Not playing around anymore.
Wayward DP
Well-known member
Is number one a habs or leafs fan?
Wayward DP
Well-known member
I’m more of a doobie man myself but whatever tickles your itch.
Habsy
Not playing around anymore.
Me too. Too lazy to roll one. I'm too old to pay for prerolls. I got this shit.
zeke
Well-known member
I'm still flabbergasted how a guy that nobody knew a few weeks ago is now worth a 1st rounder by consensus. classic nobody watches him play valuation here.
hockeylover
Well-known member
If I was an agent, Nick Kypreos would be my BFF.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
I don't think he's trying to necessarily. But I do think that he's spent the last 10 years of his life with the entire hockey universe jerking him off. Easy to fall into the belief that you can do no wrong when all of the experts are ordering your bathwater in bulk.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
That guy doing a great job selling hot dogs could be a Shanny replacement though.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
If this was really that impactful though, wouldn't we see surprising macro results? We're going on 30 years now where the quality of club that wins the playoff tournament is almost indistinguisable in quality from the winner if we awarded our cup the way that euro football does theirs.
Surely by now we would see some evidence that this change in the flow of the game was producing stanley cup champions that played "a certain way" instead of it just being on of the top 6-7 regular season teams over and over again with no apparent pattern in which type of regular season team won.
At what point do we just accept that the change of the flow of the game (which I agree, there is definitely an officiating shift....usually...) in the playoffs, doesn't actually change which types of teams win the whole thing?
zeke
Well-known member
fixing the Oilers is an interesting project.
obviously the GM has to go.
but what does the new GM do?
1. Literally everyone is expendable other than McDrai (unless you get some crazy haul).
2. Worst contracts on the team are Nurse and Jack. Jack is likely a sunk cost as I'm not sure he'll ever play well enough again to make him attractive again, even at half price.
3. Nurse actually has a chance to recover some value though if he's properly sheltered at even strength and given all the offensive opportunities with McDrai. Trying to make him look as attractive as possible so they can move him in a non-cripppling deal would be my priority.
4. So the priority adds for me would be to somehow get 2 legit top-4 quality dmen that can handle top matchups. They don't have to be awesome but they ahve to be able to do it at a decent level . This is the biggest hole on the team and filling it would be the both the easiest route to improvement and would let them shelter Nurse and possibly make him tradeable (even if just for another bad contract).
5. To make caproom for those two adds I would immediately SELL HIGH on RNH. He's a shit player racking up a shittonne of McDrai-aided points and they could for sure dupe someone in to taking him right and and giving up good value for him. I would absolutely do this and get a good young cheap asset for him.
6. To make more caproom I would obviously also trade Pulju/Yamo/Foegele/Barrie/Ceci/Kulak for whatever you can get. Try to clear all that salary if possible, hopefully get some decent picks in return.
If they could do all that, they MIGHT get themselves into a position where they have a team that can plausibly work, with enough capspace to make some smart depth adds throughout the lineup.
Of course, it can't be Ken Holland making those adds.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
Easiest job in hockey is to be a bad top 4 "defensive" defender on a bad hockey team.
The canadian hockey media is fucking dying to pump your tires if you're one of those.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
I put some thought into this the other day and honestly don't see a path that runs out of runway before Connor asks out or you're otherwise forced to pull the pin and trade him (if he declines to extend in summer 2025...what do you do?)
- There's too much bad salary to unload that's going to require salary coming back...you have to slam dunk all of those trades. Turn bad salary into good. Real jedi mind trick shit.
- Jack probably needs waivers and a stint in the AHL. He's always been soft between the ears, physical talent was never his problem. He needs to be rebuilt again. But then what do you do? Skinner + what?
- Can you commit 13 million to Leon in summer 2024 on his extension? Seriously, can you spend that kind of cheddar on a PP specialist masquerading as an elite centreman? Is that even remotely a good idea?
- The whole blueline needs to go. The whole fucking thing and there's not a lot to work with. Glasses did an outstanding rebuild of our blueline, but even he started with Rielly & Gardiner. His only bad contract was Zaitsev. Edmonton's blueline is all kids and Zaitsev contracts. Even from that much better starting point, it took glasses 3-4 years to really turn the blueline into what it is. Edmonton doesn't have that kind of time.
I seriously don't see a path for them. Holland had his chance to salvage the McDavid era and fucked it.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
I'll do my part then
zeke
Well-known member
can;t argue with that. but you have to try. and I think my path is plausible even if super tough.
I don't think it takes a ton of slamdunk trades. I think as long as you accept that you're getting nothing for Pulju/Yamo/Foegele/Barrie/Ceci/Kulak you can probably ditch most of that capspace without too much pain.
And yeah you commit to Drai. You should plan on him being a winger, though.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
Fair, yeah. Tough to just shrug and give up on a generational player.
I disagree here though. We just don't see it happen a whole lot, not when there's term attached like most of those guys have. I really think they would be stuck doing deals with multiple pieces of crap for one cheaper piece of crap (Like Barrie + Yamo for Ristolainen or some shit). Or their pieces of crap with less term for another team's better piece of crap with more term.
I keep going back and forth on it. Fuck he's bad at 5v5 for that kind of scratch. But the optics of trading him for anything other than an epic fuckton are just horrible. If you lose that deal on optics alone you would have to expect a Connor trade request shortly. I would seriously try to turn him into multiple real good pieces though.
axlsalinger
Well-known member
reading this board it does seem like there's only roughly 18-23 players who deserve to play in the NHL, and even around 20% of them kind of suck. Luckily the rest of them all play for 1 team, which happens to wear blue and white that we cheer for. Yay, lucky us!!
Darnell Nurse and Nugent-Hopkins are good players who could absolutely play for the Leafs. (yes, Nurse is definitely overpaid. Doesn't mean he's useless) And Dom has Drai worth $13.5 million dollars, which is $5m surplus since he's paid 8.5. Can we at least stop pretending that he isn't good at hockey, or that power plays are not a part of the game?
Darnell Nurse and Nugent-Hopkins are good players who could absolutely play for the Leafs. (yes, Nurse is definitely overpaid. Doesn't mean he's useless) And Dom has Drai worth $13.5 million dollars, which is $5m surplus since he's paid 8.5. Can we at least stop pretending that he isn't good at hockey, or that power plays are not a part of the game?