1. Yes your goaltending is better. It's really marginal and we've each got an elite starter so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
2. In the same way, I've got a coaching edge, though your coach is also very good, so not much ground made up there.
3. Glue-only Corson? That's a fair statement because he's a good deal behind the best scoring line players in this draft and his own linemates too. But what do you think McVeigh and Deadmarsh are? Corson's a good 10% ahead of McVeigh offensively based on VsX, while being every bit as pestiferous and not giving up anything in any other area. Deadmarsh is pretty much Corson's equal in 7-year VsX, but wasn't as good in any intangible area, and put up literally 14 seasons as good as Deadmarsh's best 7. He would best be described as "a slightly better Adam Deadmarsh, and for twice as long". Now, I realize you did what you had to do and got players who can do things other than score to help your offense-only scorers, so I don't begrudge you for that. But they're just as glue-only as Corson!
4. One thing that really concerns me about the Conception Bay squad is that its second pairing features a player just not qualified for the MLD. Guys who played less than 19 minutes a game in their career can wait an extra draft, when there are only 8 teams and 48 starting D-men. He's in a rare category at this point. Not only that, but his career was quite short. And when he went to other teams (yes, he was getting old for the era), his role did not increase, so there's little to say "well if he had been on Hartford all along he'd have been playing 24 minutes, he only played so little 'cause it was the Islanders." Bob Lorimer was playing more than Langevin!
5. I just don't know what to make of the third line I'm up against. It features a very good defensive forward (better than his Regina counterpart though?) who, since no one drafted a goon, is probably the worst offensive forward in this draft. It also features a pretty solid offensive player who doesn't have much of a defensive or physical resume and actually loses in whatever type of comparison you want to make to Chamberlain. It also features Alex Burrows, a very good defensive forward in his own right, and a decent scorer in the right situation - which he is not in now. Comparing him to Peters in intangible areas is tough, but offensively he does not measure up (368 to 267 in VsX 7-year), and his decent selke voting record is likely not as good as what one would imagine for Peters from reading the THN articles on him. Offensively, defensively, physically, Regina's 3rd line is going to be the most effective. This is where we expect to win the series.
6. Zhluktov is a really big question mark here too. He was an ok, not great scorer in the soviet league, peaking at 5th and 10th in scoring. Ribeiro has been 12th and 13th in the NHL. If there was really anything concrete we knew about Zhluktov's game you could use this to bridge the offensive gap that exists, but you'd have to rely on Ribeiro's negatives, and is that really enough when he's a guy who's been practically a guarantee to be top-40 in scoring when healthy for the past 11 seasons?
7. short form stuff:
- I definitely take Dornhoefer over McVeigh, but yeah, Cloutier's gonna outscore Courtnall, no doubt.
- Apps and Allison are practically equal (I wouldn't call Apps "balanced", he's a pure playmaker just like Allison, 30% of his points were goals, 27% for Allison). I see no reason to take Deadmarsh over Corson. Is it possible to argue Hamill over Stastny? He was 16th in points twice, which was good, but that was 1942 and 1946, and the dropoff is quite sharp after that.
- I don't have anything bad to say about your 4th line. Our fourth lines won't win or lose this for us.
- Although I gave low all-star votes to Mummery, Gibbs and Ellett, and I think your defense is solid enough, I honestly think my early priority on defense gave me four defensemen better than your best. What would you say to that?
- You're going to have more potent point men on the PP. It's a good set of four guys, but we expect to carry the play more often at even strength and allow you the short term PP advantage.
- Your PK is in trouble, considering you've got Jonsson on it. He almost never killed penalties in real life. Regina's PK defense is loaded with consummate defensive players. whatever edge your pointmen have is going to be negated by the Ley-Evans-Burke-Jarrett quartet. It's unfair that any MLD team would have to face those four for a whole series, really.
