ATD 2021 - Rene Lecavalier Division First Round (3) Corpus Christi Ice Rays v. (6) Brampton Beavers

[The Macho King]

CORPUS CHRISTI ICE RAYS

COACH - Punch Imlach
CAPTAIN - Mario Lemieux
ASSISTANT CAPTAINS - Chris Pronger, Bob Gainey, Lanny McDonald, Brian Leetch

#7 Doug Bentley-#66 Mario Lemieux (C)-#26 Martin St. Louis
#7 Keith Tkachuk-#26 Peter Stastny-#9 Lanny McDonald (A)
#20 Pete Mahovlich-#19 Nicklas Backstrom-#81 Phil Kessel
#23 Bob Gainey (A)-#29 Joel Otto-#33 Dirk Graham

#44 Chris Pronger (A)-#2 Brian Leetch (A)
#28 Brian Rafalski-#59 Roman Josi
#17 Jean-Guy Talbot-#51 Brian Campbell

#1 Turk Broda
#31 Ed Giacomin

EXTRA SKATERS: #61 RW Reggie Leach, #33 D/RW Dustin Byfuglien, #39 C Doug Weight

Powerplay

PP1: Keith Tkachuk-Mario Lemieux-Lanny McDonald-Chris Pronger-Roman Josi
PP2: Doug Bentley-Peter Stastny-Martin St Louis-Brian Rafalski-Brian Leetch

Penalty Kill

PK1: Bob Gainey-Joel Otto-Chris Pronger-Jean-Guy Talbot
PK2: Dirk Graham-Pete Mahovlich-Brian Leetch-Roman Josi


VERSUS


BRAMPTON BEAVERS

COACH: Marc Crawford
CAPTAIN: Stan Mikita
ALTERNATE CAPTAINS: Lafleur, Howe, Sundin

Ilya Kovalchuk - Stan Mikita - Joe Mullen
Michel Goulet - Marcel Dionne - Guy Lafleur
Gary Roberts - Mats Sundin - Theo Fleury
Rick Martin - Pierre Turgeon - Marian Gaborik

Victor Hedman - Mark Howe
Ryan Suter - Kimmo Timonen
Wade Redden - Teppo Numminen

Ed Belfour
Curtis Joseph

EXTRA SKATERS:

Milan Hejduk, Mike Richards, Steve Duchesne


PP1:
Goulet - Dionne - Lafleur
Kovalchuk - Howe

PP2:
Roberts - Mikita - Mullen
Hedman - Turgeon

PK1:
Mikita - Fleury
Suter - Numminen

PK2:
Roberts - Sundin
Hedman - Timonen​

Click to read more...

 

[tabness]

Brampton is built like an all star team in modern times, especially with the great skating, puck moving defense which is at a premium in importance to teams nowadays like it has never been before. I guess I was unique in liking them lot more than the rest based on how they placed, shame. Goulet Dionne Lafleur is my favorite line this year, just beautiful. Would have liked to see one of the forward lines clearly be suited to play a role on the team, though.

Corpus Christi, on the other hand, has my favorite core group in the entire draft though with Lemieux with Pronger and Leetch being the first three picks.

 

[nabby12]

Brampton is indeed built very much like an all-star team. It will be difficult for them to make things happen in the playoffs against such a strongly assembled team as Corpus Christi.

Lemieux/Peter Stastny might be the best 1c/2C combo in this draft. Doug Bentley is a terrific linemate for Lemieux. And Turk Broda is always the excellent "money goaltender" that is built for the playoffs when the game matters most.

Corpus Christi probably gets this done in five or six games.

 

[Voight]

Thanks for the comments. This may have been the best team I've ever built in the ATD

 

[BraveCanadian]

Corpus Christi probably gets this done in five or six games.

By all means give your opinion on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the teams, but can we not do this?

 

[ResilientBeast]

By all means give your opinion on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the teams, but can we not do this?

Yeah I thought there was an implicit rule to not do this?

@TheDevilMadeMe am I crazy?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Yeah I thought there was an implicit rule to not do this?

@TheDevilMadeMe am I crazy?

I've never seen anyone be that explicit before, though I have seen comments like "good luck, you're facing the best team in the draft!"

 

[BraveCanadian]

I've never seen anyone be that explicit before, though I have seen comments like "good luck, you're facing the best team in the draft!"

Pretty sure one year people chimed in on one of my series like that and it was considered a faux pas. I'd like people to make up their own minds.

 

[Habsfan18]

I agree that we should try to avoid posts like that.

To be fair though, and I’ve touched on this before, with the way the ATD typically works on this site a 3rd seed will beat a 6th seed 98% of the time. Yeah yeah, some people will get bent out of shape about this but it’s true.

The vast majority of voters aren’t going to change their mind about a team, a week after voting them as a 6th seed. That’s why I’ve always maintained we should have fewer postseason teams each year. Not saying everyone does this, but I’m fairly certain some posters don’t even study rosters and the matchups at this point, they just look at the seeds and vote.

It may not be a popular opinion, but I think we need to revamp the playoffs. It just seems long and drawn out when we all know a top 2-3 seed from each conference is likely to win the whole thing, each year. And it’s understandable, because those are the top teams as viewed by the GM’s.

I’m not trying to attack the integrity of the ATD. I love this thing. But upsets happen in real life, they don’t seem to happen too often here. Not the big upsets anyways. So it kind of makes the playoffs predictable.

 

[BraveCanadian]

I agree that we should try to avoid posts like that.

To be fair though, and I’ve touched on this before, with the way the ATD typically works on this site a 3rd seed will beat a 6th seed 98% of the time. Yeah yeah, some people will get bent out of shape about this but it’s true.

The vast majority of voters aren’t going to change their mind about a team, a week after voting them as a 6th seed. That’s why I’ve always maintained we should have fewer postseason teams each year. Not saying everyone does this, but I’m fairly certain some posters don’t even study rosters and the matchups at this point, they just look at the seeds and vote.

It may not be a popular opinion, but I think we need to revamp the playoffs. It just seems long and drawn out when we all know a top 2-3 seed from each conference is likely to win the whole thing, each year. And it’s understandable, because those are the top teams as viewed by the GM’s.

I’m not trying to attack the integrity of the ATD. I love this thing. But upsets happen in real life, they don’t seem to happen too often here. Not the big upsets anyways. So it kind of makes the playoffs predictable.

The way for it to happen is a bad matchup for the favourite. However, that would require people to actually participate and point out why a particular matchup is bad. Maybe my impression is wrong but there seems to be very little discussion the past few years in many of the playoff threads.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

On "Upsets" and ATD Protocol...

When we vote on a Playoff Round, we know the seeds. What we DON'T know is the closeness of the Regular Season standings. A 4 v 5 seeding may have occurred on the paper-thin margin of one paltry vote. Theoretically, at least, a 3 v 6 matchup might have been decided by the difference of 2 or 3 votes.

How I view the "Favorite/Underdog" dynamic, as a voter-
What the teams accomplished in the Regular Season is held in escrow while assessing the interplay of the one team to the other. I'll give the favorite credit for home-ice... but other than that, it's zero-zero and both teams have to prove themselves all over again.

How I view the "Favorite/Underdog" dynamic, when in the role of underdog-
The burden-of-proof is on me to demonstrate that the underdog deserves more credit than one might otherwise be inclined to give them if simply reading the Regular Season results. If a participant is an underdog, and then makes no attempt to be an advocate for his squad- well... they get what they get.

In this ATD Opening Round, I think that most of the matchups could have had the respective underdogs make credible cases for prevailing. Some underdogs DID make fine cases, I thought. Whether they made a difference to me is between me and my still-secret ballot. However, as long as points raised are not utterly sophistic, the effort is appreciated.

 

[The Macho King]

On "Upsets" and ATD Protocol...

When we vote on a Playoff Round, we know the seeds. What we DON'T know is the closeness of the Regular Season standings. A 4 v 5 seeding may have occurred on the paper-thin margin of one paltry vote. Theoretically, at least, a 3 v 6 matchup might have been decided by the difference of 2 or 3 votes.

How I view the "Favorite/Underdog" dynamic, as a voter-
What the teams accomplished in the Regular Season is held in escrow while assessing the interplay of the one team to the other. I'll give the favorite credit for home-ice... but other than that, it's zero-zero and both teams have to prove themselves all over again.

How I view the "Favorite/Underdog" dynamic, when in the role of underdog-
The burden-of-proof is on me to demonstrate that the underdog deserves more credit than one might otherwise be inclined to give them if simply reading the Regular Season results. If a participant is an underdog, and then makes no attempt to be an advocate for his squad- well... they get what they get.

In this ATD Opening Round, I think that most of the matchups could have had the respective underdogs make credible cases for prevailing. Some underdogs DID make fine cases, I thought. Whether they made a difference to me is between me and my still-secret ballot. However, as long as points raised are not utterly sophistic, the effort is appreciated.

Having seen how the sausage is made - some of these divisions were really tight top to bottom, some less so (but tightness around matchups).

The first round at least is much less of a foregone conclusion than I assumed.

I agree that we should try to avoid posts like that.

To be fair though, and I’ve touched on this before, with the way the ATD typically works on this site a 3rd seed will beat a 6th seed 98% of the time. Yeah yeah, some people will get bent out of shape about this but it’s true.

The vast majority of voters aren’t going to change their mind about a team, a week after voting them as a 6th seed. That’s why I’ve always maintained we should have fewer postseason teams each year. Not saying everyone does this, but I’m fairly certain some posters don’t even study rosters and the matchups at this point, they just look at the seeds and vote.

It may not be a popular opinion, but I think we need to revamp the playoffs. It just seems long and drawn out when we all know a top 2-3 seed from each conference is likely to win the whole thing, each year. And it’s understandable, because those are the top teams as viewed by the GM’s.

I’m not trying to attack the integrity of the ATD. I love this thing. But upsets happen in real life, they don’t seem to happen too often here. Not the big upsets anyways. So it kind of makes the playoffs predictable.

Here's the thing with the playoffs - we vote on the best team. But players can steal a series, players get injured, players that have played their entire career as linemates suddenly can't complete a 5 foot pass. We don't factor that stuff in.

And ya know - I don't necessarily think we should. I like the big playoff format (maybe not all 24 but at least 16) because it gives everyone a chance to experience it. I think that's worthwhile.