Rumor: Rumors & Proposals Thread | You're My Boy Bouch!

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

Supposedly Saros is available, Nashville is just asking for a huge return for him(justifiably).

Source?

 

[Nostradumbass]

Honestly says more about Vegas than it does about Skinner. Not sure how many Stars and Jets fans are talking about Hellebuyck's and Oettinger's playoffs the way some around here are talking about Skinner's.

Skinner played terrible, there’s no denying it. He had a great season but that was a tough series for him.

 

[WaitingForUser]

Supposedly Saros is available, Nashville is just asking for a huge return for him(justifiably).

Nashville goalies scare the shit outa me to be honest. Defenseman absolutely but I’m sure that a goalies in Nashville benefit from the defenseman just like the Devils of 90-00s did.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Supposedly Saros is available, Nashville is just asking for a huge return for him(justifiably).

Hadn't heard Saros but there were multiple reporting around the draft that Askarov was available. Nashville was trying to aggressively move for another top draft pick. Predators Rumors: Nashvile Shopping Top NHL Goalie Prospect

 

[Spawn]

Nashville goalies scare the shit outa me to be honest. Defenseman absolutely but I’m sure that a goalies in Nashville benefit from the defenseman just like the Devils of 90-00s did.

Nashville has been a pretty mediocre team defensively since Saros became their defacto #1 3-4 years ago once Rinne was the end of his career.

 

[Tarus]

Source?

Friedman and some others back in June, with talk the Kings were sniffing around as far back as the trade deadline around the same time when the Oilers were making a push for the also thought to be unavailable Ekholm.

They've since dumped both Johanson and Duchene and look to be going full rebuild, Saros and his approaching UFA status might next up if someone is willing to pay the reported 2 or 3 first round picks.

 

[Fourier]

I’ll believe it when it happens. I was told the same thing about McDavid deal

I am not sure what you mean by I was told the same thing about the McDavid deal but let me show you why a $100M cap is going to happen barring another pandemic level event.

The current cap at $83.5M is part of the latest CBA which was negotiated as a response to the 2021-2022 season being lost as far as fans were concerned due to the pandemic. The cap is being held artificially low so that the players can pay off a huge escrow debt which was originally foretasted to be gone sometime around the end of the 2026-2027 season. But NHL revenues rose much more quickly than expected. Part of this was due to return of fans but it is also due to the new US TV deal and a large number of new revenue sources. In Dec Bettman suggested the the projected revenues for thei year would be in the $5.7B range and that they would need to rise another $140M to pay off the debt this year. In March Bettman was quoted as saying the revenues would be nearly $6B this year. Here is a more detailed version of that:

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman Outlines Path To Potential Salary-Cap Spike For 2023-24 Season

Gary Bettman painted a rosy financial picture for the NHL as the GM meetings wrapped on Wednesday, and teased the possibility of a larger-than-anticipated salary-cap bump this summer.

www.forbes.com

The first involves the league generating an additional $100 million in hockey-related revenue beyond this season’s current projections, Bettman said. While still quite large, that number has shrunk from the projection of $140-150 million three months ago, at the Board of Governors’ meetings in December.

This comment would put this years revenue at about $5.8B which is up $400M from the previous year, an increase of 7.4%. So what would the cap be in normal times with that level of revenue?
The simplified basic formula is that the midpoint is set at

revenue/64

or in this case at $5.8B/64 = $90.625M. The ceiling is then set at 115% of the midpoint which in this case would be $104.2M. Now I say simplified because there are pension and other payments that impact the calculation which would reduce this number modestly. But even after they are factored in the League salary cap under normal circumstances would be close to $100M already based on this year's revenues. It is also the the case that outside of the 2021-22 pandemic year NHL revenues have never dropped year to year even during the financial crisis.

As part of the previous agreement the NHL agreed to cap escrow at 6% over the last three years of the CBA. Because of this the League has a conservative plan to return to normal. But if revenues keep rising they may be forced to abandon that plan to avoid a massive anomaly at the end of this CBA. The existing plan would see the cap at $87.5M next year and then $90M+ over the next two years. But even at current revenues those ceilings would see negative escrow with the players getting cheques at the end of the year. So it seems very likely that the League and the NHLPA will negotiate a more rapid return to normal. Even maintaining the 6% escrow cap the ceiling based on today's revenues could be set at about $97M.

What does all of this mean? In summary, barring another pandemic level disaster it is almost impossible to see how the cap does not get to $100M within he next 4 years.

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

Friedman and some others back in June, with talk the Kings were sniffing around as far back as the trade deadline around the same time when the Oilers were making a push for the also thought to be unavailable Ekholm.

They've since dumped both Johanson and Duchene and look to be going full rebuild, Saros and his approaching UFA status might next up if someone is willing to pay the reported 2 or 3 first round picks.

I guess we have different memories of the summer. The way I remember it there was speculation that Nashville would have made Saros available but ultimately decided not to which was why Askarov was heavily rumoured on draft day. I remember Friedman or Seravalli or both say that it's more of a retool/culture change as they still have Forsberg, Josi and Saros. They don't want to move them all, but that's what would be required for a full rebuild. O'Reilly offers leadership and stability and wouldn't have been signed if they weren't planning to be competitive. I think if they were planning to trade Saros it would have happened before free agency when the likes of LA, Ottawa, Carolina and Pittsburgh all needed starters.

 

[Soundwave]

Completely glossing over the fact that Hellebuyck's SV% vs Vegas was worse than Skinner's, that Gibson has put up some of the worst numbers of the past 5 years, Hart is the opposite of a sure thing, and Saros & Demko completely unavailable.

Roloson's first playoffs was an 0.851.Talbot 0.846. What a wild concept that they improved after their first experience.

Hellybuyck is proven to have had good playoff rounds before.

Talbot played two periods as a back up in blow out losses in the playoffs before coming to Edmonton, there's nothing really in those stats. His first playoff run was with us and he put up a .924 save percentage, which was up from his regular season save percentage that year of .919.

Bottom line though is teams like Colorado and Vegas don't care about the excuses Oiler fans make for their goaltending or the amount of coddling they get here, they are very happy to light them up and take the series win as a result. No one cares what your excuse is when you have a clear roster weakness, they are going to take full advantage of it.

Our D and goaltending make it very easy for them to do that.

 

[Soundwave]

I love how you keep pushing this one save percentage like it means anything this year. You keep beating the "worst playoff save percentage in modern NHL history" drum though.

No one is just accepting it. I think most people think it will improve and aren't using it as some benchmark to evaluate our goalies.

Nevermind the fact that Demko, Hellebuyck and Saros are supremely unrealistic options. Even Carter Hart is statistically a worse goalie than Jack Campbell over his career. But for some reason you think every goalie in the league will somehow be better than the two we have. Like simply swapping a goalie with whoever we can will clearly improve the team.

What benchmark is more relevant than playoff play?

It's not even like Skinner had some magical regular season, lol, .914 is a lower save percentage than what an injured 39/40-year-old Mike Smith put up the year before followed up by a total collapse when the games mattered the most.

We can make the playoffs with a hurt 40 year old in net, there's any number of guys out there that could do what Skinner did behind a team with the run support/ fire power at the top of the roster that this team has. A goalie here is going to be judged primarily on their playoff play, that's where we need a guy to step up and we're simply not getting the level of goaltending we need to win in the playoffs.

Mike Smith was a good deal better than Skinner in the playoffs the year before, and that already wasn't good enough, so he'd have to improve just to get to a level that already didn't cut it.

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

Hellybuyck is proven to have had good playoff rounds before.

Talbot played two periods as a back up in blow out losses in the playoffs before coming to Edmonton, there's nothing really in those stats. His first playoff run was with us and he put up a .924 save percentage, which was up from his regular season save percentage that year of .919.

Bottom line though is teams like Colorado and Vegas don't care about the excuses Oiler fans make for their goaltending or the amount of coddling they get here, they are very happy to light them up and take the series win as a result. No one cares what your excuse is when you have a clear roster weakness, they are going to take full advantage of it.

Our D and goaltending make it very easy for them to do that.

I bet Aiden Hill and Laurent Brossoit would have filled you with positivity last off-season.

Ironically Vegas and Colorado proved that you don't need a Hellebuyck. The examples you used are doing the opposite for the argument you're trying to make.

 

[Tarus]

I guess we have different memories of the summer. The way I remember it there was speculation that Nashville would have made Saros available but ultimately decided not to which was why Askarov was heavily rumoured on draft day. I remember Friedman or Seravalli or both say that it's more of a retool/culture change as they still have Forsberg, Josi and Saros. They don't want to move them all, but that's what would be required for a full rebuild. O'Reilly offers leadership and stability and wouldn't have been signed if they weren't planning to be competitive. I think if they were planning to trade Saros it would have happened before free agency when the likes of LA, Ottawa, Carolina and Pittsburgh all needed starters.

You must have missed it because the entire month of June was full of speculation that Saros was available for a big offer(ie. they were shopping around a at least a little bit). It fizzled out, but every name player that was rumored to be available(Kovency, Hellybyck, Gibson, Hart etc) ended up fizzling out as the realities of a cap-locked league asserted itself and nothing much happened. No one wants to retain anything and everyone wants a ransom for the players, so no one is getting anything done even if there is interest.

Nashville might be trying to stay a bit competitive, but they're pretty clearly rebuilding too. O'Reilly isn't an impact player anymore and won't make up even a fraction of what they jettisoned out for next to nothing in July. He's likely there for the nice cushy retirement contract and the lack of competition for ice time, not because he really thinks they plan to be competitive over the next 4 years. It also looks much more like a rebuild move rather than a "we want to be competitive" move from the Pred's perspective too - bringing in aging vets with a strong track record to mentor the prospects they have and plan to acquire.

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

You must have missed it because the entire month of June was full of speculation that Saros was available for a big offer(ie. they were shopping around a at least a little bit). It fizzled out, but every name player that was rumored to be available(Kovency, Hellybyck, Gibson, Hart etc) ended up fizzling out as the realities of a cap-locked league asserted itself and nothing much happened. No one wants to retain anything and everyone wants a ransom for the players, so no one is getting anything done even if there is interest.

Nashville might be trying to stay a bit competitive, but they're pretty clearly rebuilding too. O'Reilly isn't an impact player anymore and won't make up even a fraction of what they jettisoned out for next to nothing in July. He's likely there for the nice cushy retirement contract and the lack of competition for ice time, not because he really thinks they plan to be competitive over the next 4 years. It also looks much more like a rebuild move rather than a "we want to be competitive" move from the Pred's perspective too - bringing in aging vets with a strong track record to mentor the prospects they have and plan to acquire.

Agree to disagree I guess. I think you may be overvaluing Duchene and Johansen a little. They finished 3 points out of a playoff spot last season with Forsberg and Johansen missing the last 30 games each and Josi out for the last 14 games, as well as losing Ekholm at the deadline.

They may regress a bit, but they've proven to be too good to be labelled as a rebuilding team. They're nowhere near the bottom of the league and would be awful asset management to hold on to Josi and Forsberg if that was their plan. It also doesn't line up with Askarov being trade bait at the draft.

I can confidently say I've listened to every 32 Thoughts and DFO Rundown podcast this year and have not heard Friedman or Seravalli say the Predators are rebuilding.

 

[Mcnotloilersfan]

I bet Aiden Hill and Laurent Brossoit would have filled you with positivity last off-season.

Ironically Vegas and Colorado proved that you don't need a Hellebuyck. The examples you used are doing the opposite for the argument you're trying to make.

Yeah I'm honestly in the mindset that unless they play disastrous, we can win a cup with that Tandem if they are in fact, played like a Tandem.

Keep improving this teams defending and attack. The better the team is Infront, the better our Goaltenders will be.

 

[joestevens29]

Agree to disagree I guess. I think you may be overvaluing Duchene and Johansen a little. They finished 3 points out of a playoff spot last season with Forsberg and Johansen missing the last 30 games each and Josi out for the last 14 games, as well as losing Ekholm at the deadline.

They may regress a bit, but they've proven to be too good to be labelled as a rebuilding team. They're nowhere near the bottom of the league and would be awful asset management to hold on to Josi and Forsberg if that was their plan. It also doesn't line up with Askarov being trade bait at the draft.

I can confidently say I've listened to every 32 Thoughts and DFO Rundown podcast this year and have not heard Friedman or Seravalli say the Predators are rebuilding.

Sadly I don't know that the Preds themselves know what they are even doing. Always in talks for guys that are available when clearly that roster shouldn't be spending assets to get older.

 

[Broberg Speed]

What if Adin Hill doesn't turn back into a pumpkin. Good chance he doesn't. Look at that freakin defense in front of him.

And I look at the Golden Knights draft picks over the next 3 years. They have 20 of 21 picks. Missing a 7th rounder from the 2025 season.

Screw you Bettman.

 

[GOilers88]

What benchmark is more relevant than playoff play?

It's not even like Skinner had some magical regular season, lol, .914 is a lower save percentage than what an injured 39/40-year-old Mike Smith put up the year before followed up by a total collapse when the games mattered the most.

We can make the playoffs with a hurt 40 year old in net, there's any number of guys out there that could do what Skinner did behind a team with the run support/ fire power at the top of the roster that this team has. A goalie here is going to be judged primarily on their playoff play, that's where we need a guy to step up and we're simply not getting the level of goaltending we need to win in the playoffs.

Mike Smith was a good deal better than Skinner in the playoffs the year before, and that already wasn't good enough, so he'd have to improve just to get to a level that already didn't cut it.

Once again, there isn't a single goalie that could realistically be had that you can say with confidence is going to put up whatever arbitrary numbers you deem necessary to win a cup. It's a crapshoot.

Improve the defense and the goaltending improves as well.

 

[joestevens29]

What if Adin Hill doesn't turn back into a pumpkin. Good chance he doesn't. Look at that freakin defense in front of him.

And I look at the Golden Knights draft picks over the next 3 years. They have 20 of 21 picks. Missing a 7th rounder from the 2025 season.

Screw you Bettman.

Ya it's Bettman's fault that GM's were stupid and just gave Vegas players.

GM's screwed up that expansion draft more than anything. Florida themselves gave Smith so that Vegas would take future Conn Smythe winner Marchessault.

Or how about a 1st, 2nd and Clarkson so they took Karlsson.

Just some great GM's that had no idea the gold they had in their backyards.

 

[LTIR]

Not sure I would categorize McLeod or Janmark as low energy players. They are arguably two of the fastest players we have and are able to create on their own.

I guess energy just means hitting?

Energy means bringing fans to their feet and pumping up the bench. McLeod and Janmark had the 'energy' of Yamamoto and Hyman but Kostin brought a different energy. Kassian (younger) is a good comparable.

They miss Kassian's physicality and energy, too. They paid a lot to get out of his contract and you heard no complaints about it.

Kassian at his best was better than Kostin likely ever will be.

We didn't because Kassian declined on ice and had the dumb penalty psycho concerns. If he had the motor of Kostin he would have been a good PTO add

 

[Broberg Speed]

Ya it's Bettman's fault that GM's were stupid and just gave Vegas players.

GM's screwed up that expansion draft more than anything. Florida themselves gave Smith so that Vegas would take future Conn Smythe winner Marchessault.

Or how about a 1st, 2nd and Clarkson so they took Karlsson.

Just some great GM's that had no idea the gold they had in their backyards.

Gary Bettman has been the commissioner of the NHL for 30 seasons. It has been 30 years since a Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup. Before Bettman oozed onto the scene Canadian teams won Stanley Cups all the time.

Go tell someone else about Bettman not being culpable. He has f***ed Canada for 30 years and counting. Enough with the "every GM being incompetent except for the super GM bullshit!" Because it's bullshit.

Vegas Golden Knights
6 years in the league
made the playoffs 5 of those six years
11 playoff series wins... not playoff game wins, PLAYOFF SERIES WINS!
2 Stanley Cup appearances
1 Stanley Cup

 

[McDoused]

Energy means bringing fans to their feet and pumping up the bench. McLeod and Janmark had the 'energy' of Yamamoto and Hyman but Kostin brought a different energy. Kassian (younger) is a good comparable.


We didn't because Kassian declined on ice and had the dumb penalty psycho concerns. If he had the motor of Kostin he would have been a good PTO add

Energy just appears to be another word for hitting. Like I said, Janmark and McLeod contribute to the team on the ice more than Kostin did. The problem is that fans still think we need a Raffi Torres or Zack Kassian to run guys on the ice. Basically someone that we can send out to hit guys, stir shit up and hit guys so that Nurse/Kane/Ekholm dont have to.

I'm not saying we couldnt use a guy like that but its definitely not something we need for the regular season IMO. Playoffs sure but that's someone you bring in at the deadline.

 

[Tad Mikowsky]

What if Adin Hill doesn't turn back into a pumpkin. Good chance he doesn't. Look at that freakin defense in front of him.

And I look at the Golden Knights draft picks over the next 3 years. They have 20 of 21 picks. Missing a 7th rounder from the 2025 season.

Screw you Bettman.

This whole Bettman conspiracy shit is almost as pathetic as getting sick over a game.

 

[Broberg Speed]

This whole Bettman conspiracy shit is almost as pathetic as getting sick over a game.

not as pathetic as your stalking

 

[BudBundy]

My post very clearly stated 'in the playoffs'.

Given the quality of competition, 3.12 is an utter disaster Fourier. Be reasonable. He cost us numerous games singlehandedly.

What “numerous” games did he single-handedly lose for us? That’s such an over the top take on this.

 

[Tad Mikowsky]

not as pathetic as your stalking

Looks like you can’t handle the heat when you post some asinine bullshit.
Oh no, Vegas won a cup! Buttman is the reason why! Not because they’ve gone a completely different route compared to other expansion teams. I know this is a foreign concept to you, but there’s more than one way to build and contend.

Bettman is a big reason why Edmonton still has a team. But your simple mind can’t acknowledge it.

I’m sure this whole ordeal makes you ill. Right? Since you’re so grounded in reality.