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The Official 2026 Off-Season Thread: Revenge of the Nerds

McKenna - Matthews - Roslovic
Cowan - Tavares - Nylander
Knies - Paul - Joshua
Lorentz - Sissons - Bluegar
Duhaime

This is how I'd line them up but I'm guessing Joshua and Lorentz will be gone. I don't hate the 3rd line if Paul isn't completely dead. The way Tampa deployed Paul last year, they never really believed he was a 3C. He was given 4C duty or spot duty to fill in for injuries in the top 9 on the wing, which didn't go particularly well all year. But... If you're betting on Nick Paul and believe missing training camp caused his steep decline, you probably want to give him a shot as the 3C to start. And if he's capable, Knies and Joshua are good enough offensively to give that line a little juice. They'd be looking pretty stacked if they signed an Arvidsson type tho, so I still feel that was a missed opportunity, even if he replaces Joshua in that lineup.

I think with a fully healthy lineup being incredibly rare, and the huge amount of 4th line players they have, I sort of expect the bottom 2 lines to be deployed fairly equally in terms of icetime. 4a and 4b type lines in the end. I'm sure they'll have specific roles and stuff; main risk is that they're too plugish to really give them that extreme deployment that we expect them to get. Like do we really want a line with Colton Sissons and Duhaime/Bluegar to get dzone starts against McDavid? David Kampf all over again.
 
I think one more higher end add on Wednesday would've made the whole picture look a bit better.

There's still an opportunity to do that but it's disappointing to have so much money and blow it all on Day 1 on low end players.

If it was the case that they didn't want to go 3 years on some of the more talented guys, I think that's fine, but I probably would've stayed out of the fray a little more and looked for some value/higher upside later.

This has sorta always been what a bunch of us asked for in free agency for the last decade, nothing new really. Mehta's comments about making bets on upside is just a more appealing philosophy to me.

But hey, we've certainly been wrong many times. Hope Chundin shuts me the fuck up, Bob is incredible, Nick Paul is the Nick Paul of old, etc.
 
hockeylover said:

View: https://x.com/markhmasters/status/2073044999248265323?s=20
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All pretty clearly signings for the Marlies. Though even so, the goalie they signed (Hlavaj) is a bit of a mystery.

25 years old. Spent most of his pro career playing in the Slovak league, before one season in the Czech league and the past two seasons bouncing between the AHL & ECHL.

In every single league though, his numbers seem to be consistently horrific. So, not sure what they see in the guy or why he merited an NHL contract.
 
zeke said:
I just really really hope they have some real data saying Bob is still good. They clearly think he is, so i hope that's data driven somehow. Chayka's history with goalies is very good at least.
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After July 1st, I think we can safely dispense with the fiction that this is a “data-driven” front office. We’re pretty clearly in our “Fake nerd 2.0” era.
 
LeafGm said:
All pretty clearly signings for the Marlies. Though even so, the goalie they signed (Hlavaj) is a bit of a mystery.

25 years old. Spent most of his pro career playing in the Slovak league, before one season in the Czech league and the past two seasons bouncing between the AHL & ECHL.

In every single league though, his numbers seem to be consistently horrific. So, not sure what they see in the guy or why he merited an NHL contract.
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Hlavaj would be a Judd Brackett guy.
 
I guess there's a few things that could go really right for us that are not Chayka's doing.

Cowan takes a step.
McKenna is a 60 pt guy like some of the 1st overalls that have preceded him.
Tanev healthy (maybe??)

Those could make a huge difference.
 
hockeylover said:
I think one more higher end add on Wednesday would've made the whole picture look a bit better.

There's still an opportunity to do that but it's disappointing to have so much money and blow it all on Day 1 on low end players.

If it was the case that they didn't want to go 3 years on some of the more talented guys, I think that's fine, but I probably would've stayed out of the fray a little more and looked for some value/higher upside later.

This has sorta always been what a bunch of us asked for in free agency for the last decade, nothing new really. Mehta's comments about making bets on upside is just a more appealing philosophy to me.

But hey, we've certainly been wrong many times. Hope Chundin shuts me the fuck up, Bob is incredible, Nick Paul is the Nick Paul of old, etc.
Click to expand...
The one thing I'll concede is that we've been wrong with goaltending. Beyond that, the only thing we've been wrong about was being overly optimistic about certain moves that were made that went against advanced data. I.e. Tyson Barrie. I think generally our initial reactions are pretty spot in, it's very easy to see what a good process looks like imo.
 
zeke said:
I think we can expect more from McKenna than what Mitch and Willy did for us as rookies.
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Maybe, he certainly has more veteran support than they did, is more talented, and more support than some of the previous #1 overalls.

PP should be really great too you'd think.

But anywhere north of 60 is still a big impact and is a reasonable guess.
 
Preston said:
The one thing I'll concede is that we've been wrong with goaltending. Beyond that, the only thing we've been wrong about was being overly optimistic about certain moves that were made that went against advanced data. I.e. Tyson Barrie. I think generally our initial reactions are pretty spot in, it's very easy to see what a good process looks like imo.
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Yeah, everytime we've gone MAYBE THEY HAVE SOME DATA WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT it hasn't really gone well.

1783091100478.png
 
hockeylover said:
Yeah, everytime we've gone MAYBE THEY HAVE SOME DATA WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT it hasn't really gone well.

View attachment 35367
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That's always the cope yeah. The super secret proprietary data that is elite in quality and predictability.

Chayka made no reference of that about Bob though. He just said he has good character and works hard. Florida opted for a known shit and expensive entity in Markstrom so they obviously believe he's cooked. Not that they're necessarily right, nerds haven't conquered goalies yet imo.
 
July 1 was nuts, but this team is still looking good. They added McKenna, took two high end swings in Raddysh, who last year was better than any dman we've had since maybe prime Kaberle, if not Salming, and Bob, who might suck, but they are betting on getting playoff Bob in game 7 instead of playoff Woll/Freddy/Campbell/Samsonov.

The bottom 6 will do their job like Dubas' did. They won't win you games, but they won't lose you games. Though Paul has a history of winning games if last year was just an injured one off.

And I expect them to move Col 1st and prospects for an impact player between now and the deadline.

Vibes are still high IMO.
 
I get the Dubas comparisons, but Dubas never had $25m to spend in a single summer where he spent it all on plugs. I'd like to think that if he had that kind of cap space he'd aim higher.
 
I think my confusion is Sissons at all for that price and honestly Roslovic, unless the friendship with Matthews really matters. Arvidsson was a better option.

Blueger is probably bad, but less relevant, same with the guy who was pretending to be a dog in Washington.

I get Paul
 
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