Around the League | No lead is safe in Round 2!

[mriswith]

DOUBLE DOWN!

According to Capfriendly, the Kings will have just under 21m in cap space. The problem is they have 6 RFAs of varying degrees of importance (Byfield, Lizotte, Spence, Grundstrom, Kaliyev, and Turcotte). Signing all of them will leave them with around 5m in capspace and no goaltenders signed.

I'm grateful to Blake for torpedoing the rebuild and contention dreams of the Kings. They were building something that was going to be scary for a long time, thank goodness he choked.

 

[VanillaCoke]

LA Kings and Sens next season already over.

This league is lightyears behind in so many facets, and dinosaurs still make way too many decisions.

 

[SopelFanThe3rd]

I find the Myers, Miller, Cole, Blueger, Silovs pile quite effective.

 

[TruGr1t]

They are waiting a long-ass time for this.

Doesn’t sound they’ll be firing anyone except Keefe, which I kinda expected. Will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season.

Berube is being telegraphed for that job.

 

[mossey3535]

Looks like Green has the job in Ottawa:

Re-united with Hamonic!

un-f***ing-believable.

I thought maybe Staios played with Green so that's probably how he's getting this nepo baby job, but I checked and they never did. That makes this even dumber.

You can argue that Vancouver's roster was somewhat similar to Ottawa's, with more potentially star players. He f***ed that up horribly.

He's the worst Spengler Cup coach for Canada in quite some time. Like they didn't win a single game in the tournament bad.

NJ is Ottawa but better, and a more direct comparison in both time and composition. He was 8-12-1 as an interim after Ruff went 30-27-4 (and I think Ruff isn't a particularly good coach).

No idea how you come to the conclusion he's going to be the best coach for the Sens.

 

[mossey3535]

Doesn’t sound they’ll be firing anyone except Keefe, which I kinda expected. Will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season.

Berube is being telegraphed for that job.

I would fire the shit out of Shanahan considering how the last year has gone. If he had hired someone with actual balls who would've broken up their core-4 before 3/4 of the NTCs kicked in, this would be a different conversation.

DOUBLE DOWN!

According to Capfriendly, the Kings will have just under 21m in cap space. The problem is they have 6 RFAs of varying degrees of importance (Byfield, Lizotte, Spence, Grundstrom, Kaliyev, and Turcotte). Signing all of them will leave them with around 5m in capspace and no goaltenders signed.

I guess they cheaped out on goaltending the last two years so what's the difference?

I feel like Blake tried but failed fairly miserably.

My guess is that none of them wanted to go to Ottawa or they wanted more money than ownership wanted to pay. So they went with the “next best, experienced” coach available. With Green though his experience is failure.
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More likely that they didn't want to go to Ottawa, their owner just bought the team for that much money, I doubt a high HC salary is that much of a deterrent considering it's a new toy for a billionaire.

 

[StreetHawk]

I'm grateful to Blake for torpedoing the rebuild and contention dreams of the Kings. They were building something that was going to be scary for a long time, thank goodness he choked.

All know that Faber turned out to be much better than expected. Vilardi, recovered from his back issues, but still can't hit 75 games played in a regular season yet. Availability, as they say in football, is your best ability.

One of the issues for LA is that guys like Bjornfot, Fagemo, Turcotte, didn't pan out. Which is the reality when you build via the draft. Not all will hit.

Got a taste of a return to the PO and they opted to have a final go with Kopi/DD rather than just let the kids continue to develop and be patient. Who were the other kids that they expected to make them good?

 

[Just A Bit Outside]

LA doesn't want to win.

Ottawa doesn't want to win.

Leafs want to win but can't.

 

[Flik]

DOUBLE DOWN!

According to Capfriendly, the Kings will have just under 21m in cap space. The problem is they have 6 RFAs of varying degrees of importance (Byfield, Lizotte, Spence, Grundstrom, Kaliyev, and Turcotte). Signing all of them will leave them with around 5m in capspace and no goaltenders signed.

Yeesh, I'm just glad we don't have bottom of the barrel management anymore. It's weird having a lot of faith in the decision making your management team is making. I still pinch myself from time to time to ensure I'm not dreaming.

 

[arttk]

DOUBLE DOWN!

According to Capfriendly, the Kings will have just under 21m in cap space. The problem is they have 6 RFAs of varying degrees of importance (Byfield, Lizotte, Spence, Grundstrom, Kaliyev, and Turcotte). Signing all of them will leave them with around 5m in capspace and no goaltenders signed.

I think any GM that asks ownership to buyout a giant ass contract one year after spending so much asset to acquire that player will automatically get fired.
He had to eat that contract if he wants to keep his job,

 

[TruGr1t]

I would fire the shit out of Shanahan considering how the last year has gone. If he had hired someone with actual balls who would've broken up their core-4 before 3/4 of the NTCs kicked in, this would be a different conversation.

Yeah, I'd be inclined to as well, but he's clearly pretty untouchable in Toronto. On the bright side, it's probably infinitely more likely they roll back largely the same core group of players with Shanahan in place.

 

[Satoru Gojo]

LA Kings and Sens next season already over.

This league is lightyears behind in so many facets, and dinosaurs still make way too many decisions.

How so?

 

[Petey O]

un-f***ing-believable.

I thought maybe Staios played with Green so that's probably how he's getting this nepo baby job, but I checked and they never did. That makes this even dumber.

You can argue that Vancouver's roster was somewhat similar to Ottawa's, with more potentially star players. He f***ed that up horribly.

He's the worst Spengler Cup coach for Canada in quite some time. Like they didn't win a single game in the tournament bad.

NJ is Ottawa but better, and a more direct comparison in both time and composition. He was 8-12-1 as an interim after Ruff went 30-27-4 (and I think Ruff isn't a particularly good coach).

No idea how you come to the conclusion he's going to be the best coach for the Sens.

My guess is Green played the "I was a great transition coach for a core that is now looking like a perennial playoff team and divisional threat" card.

Yes, it's really stupid, but some of these former players getting GM jobs are really stupid, too.

 

[credulous]

I would fire the shit out of Shanahan considering how the last year has gone. If he had hired someone with actual balls who would've broken up their core-4 before 3/4 of the NTCs kicked in, this would be a different conversation.

shanahan was definitely involved in every one of those contracts tho

 

[Szechwan]

A sign of how different this year is - I only just now found out the draft lottery is tomorrow. For the last 10 years I've had that day circled in the calendar and it didn't even cross my mind this year.

 

[valkynax]

I was browsing randomly and came across this gif:

Is that...Kuzmenko? Is he eating a banana on the bench? Is he drinking coffee while eating a banana?

What is going on there????

 

[Just A Bit Outside]

A sign of how different this year is - I only just now found out the draft lottery is tomorrow. For the last 10 years I've had that day circled in the calendar and it didn't even cross my mind this year.

Another date on the calendar of annual disappointment before this year.

 

[LemonSauceD]

I was browsing randomly and came across this gif:

Is that...Kuzmenko? Is he eating a banana on the bench? Is he drinking coffee while eating a banana?

What is going on there????

It was Coca Cola lol last season

 

[valkynax]

It was Coca Cola lol last season

I don't know why but this gif put a smile on my face that I cannot wipe off of my face.

Coke with banana, that's just nasty.

 

[thecupismine]

This got brought up in another thread, but part of me wonders how TOR would've done had they not committed 50% of their cap to the Core Four in signing Tavares. Their biggest issue vs. BOS was getting offense from outside of their top guys. The sheer amount of useful depth they've let walk or gave away over the years seems crazy to me...

Imagine this alternate universe version of the Leafs circa 2020 (where they still had to trade Kadri) - do they have a strong enough supporting cast to win a few rounds?

Verhaeghe - Matthews - Hyman
Marchment - Nylander - Marner
Mikheyev - Bozak - Rodrigues
Johnsson - Engvall - Moore

The real issue with Toronto is none of their GMs found the right mix of guys to play behind the core players, or the right coach to develop those guys into players (some of our best depth acquisitions have been Leafs castoffs on the cheap, which is a big slight to their development department). With the cap space they had the last couple of years, that shouldn't have been a real issue with astute scouting & proper internal evaluation.

Its really not all that different than Vancouver before this season with Petey, Miller, Demko and Hughes, or the Sedins era prior to Gillis. People overlook the bottom half of the roster too often, but its where the best GMs stand out from the rest. Getting Higgins, Raymond, Samuelson, Wellwood, Malhotra, Torres, Ehrhoff, Hamhuis, etc. at reasonable prices is what allowed us to go from out of the playoffs under Nonis to perennial contenders.

Tavares accelerated that team's timeline in the same way Mats Sundin did for us way back. While his cap hit was big, there was no reason they couldn't have built out a better bottom 6 forwards group or bottom 3 defense.

 

[LordBacon]

 

[Vector]

I was browsing randomly and came across this gif:

Is that...Kuzmenko? Is he eating a banana on the bench? Is he drinking coffee while eating a banana?

What is going on there????

How did you kids this last season? It was big news. And yes Kuzmenko is eating a banana and drinking a flat cola on the bench. It’s actually what they give marathon runners.

It was Coca Cola lol last season

Might have been Coca Cola but in marathons it’s usually flat Pepsi.

 

[tantalum]

Forsling not handling the forecheck very well tonight.

 

[Just A Bit Outside]

Oh course the Bruins will likely win Game 1 after looking like ass for the last 3 games.

 

[mathonwy]

Welp. I don’t see that coming.