Non-Blues related 21-22 Regular Season thread

[theohall]

Watched the Flyers the other night and going to watch tonight again. Everyone on the Flyers looked good except Carter Hart. Hart looked alot like Jake Allen the season when Allen became the unquestioned #1 with Hutton backing him up. Remember how he seemed to lack basic fundamentals and to over-rely on athleticism? Hart looked darn near exactly the same. 1st GA - all he had to do was setup above the top of his crease, not inside the top and he had the time to do so. Then he guessed wrong and went to his knees on the shot which went into the top corner. 2 more goals - both off of shots from really bad angles - all he had to do was hold his post, but he wasn't even setup on his post properly. Watching Minnesota and Anaheim later that night and how both goalies in that game setup when shots came from similar bad angles - it was painfully evident how poorly Hart played that game. Making sure it wasn't just me saying those were 3 really bad goals - Mike Rupp on On the Fly that night "3 of those goals on Hart - I don't know". In other words, they were bad goals. Then the shootout happened. Hart looked Robin Lehner bad in the shootout.

[glen a richter]

Evander Kane got popped for a fake vaccine ID, 21 games. If you're already well under the microscope it's probably wise to lay a little lower than he has.

[theohall]

Hart bounced back big time in Game 2. Still looks like he's over-relying on athleticism, though. Revisit this after 10 games have gone by.

Seattle has fallen back to earth after having a relatively good first 3 games.

New Jersey currently looks like the biggest surprise team in the East. The reason for this is their youth movement, especially Jack Hughes, aren't playing like a youth movement any more.

I don't believe Buffalo's start is going to hold up.

Montreal - what the heck happened? Carey Price isn't there and the team stops scoring??

Tampa - while everyone thinks they are cheating with the Kucherov injury (even though that's the damn rules), the player Tampa can least afford to lose right now is Kucherov after the Bolts off-season player losses. They don't have the scoring depth and it's showed in their 2-2 start.

Chicago - great job analysts ignoring how poor their roster really is when picking them to be a playoff team. Quality of goaltender is meaningless when the team plays so incredibly poor defensively, and apparently, that's Colliton's system, since that's the excuse for Seth Jones looking pedestrian. Nevermind Jones looking pedestrian last season.

[glen a richter]

I know it’s only 5 games in but the Oilers seem to have taken a quantum leap into the unbeatable. They have to be an early favorite to go all the way. McDavid is unreal. I’d absolutely pencil him in for 150 points.

[theohall]

McDavid is on pace for 213. The addition of Zach Hyman has given them much needed forward depth. It's still early though, and the only significant team they've beaten was Vegas - which has the same caveat said about the Blues beating them - with Vegas missing Stone, Pacioretty and Tuch. What was interesting was the uncharacteristic mistakes Petro kept making in the game vs the Oilers. While the Oilers will likely be a playoff team with the points they are banking plus being in the weak Pacific division, I still think they will fall back to earth at some point with their current defense.

In other stuff, the addition of Cam Atkinson has put Farabee, the Flyers current leading points man with 3 G 3 A in 3 GP, on track for a massive breakout season. We'll see how Hart looks today in his 3rd start after looking great in his 2nd.

[syow25]

How did he get popped for fake card?

[theohall]

With all the crap going on around E. Kane, the NHL was investigating all the crap around him. Don't know who ratted, but someone suggested he had a fake vaccine card. Simple investigation - look at the card, go to where it said the vaccine was given, check the records. Easy to verify.

[glen a richter]

The hammer got laid down on the Blackhawks, to some extent, for the sexual assault scandal. Stan Bowman is gone but I'm not entirely sure that's actually a punishment given how lousy a GM he was.

[theohall]

What's messed up - $2M fine for covering up sexual assault. Yet the league fined the Devils $3M and 2 draft picks for circumventing the cap. Which is more serious and should be more harshly punished?? I swear, the league is tone deaf about their history of punishments whenever they make a "current" punishment decision. Should've been way more severe a penalty, IMO. And Bowman gets to "step aside" instead of facing any kind of more severe punishment from anyone. Although I'd expect he'll be facing some kind of civil suit.

[Portland Blues]

Coach Q resigns from the Panthers today.

[glen a richter]

Eichel finally got moved. Maybe I don't know enough about the Knights but it seems like the return to Buffalo wasn't especially spectacular.

[theohall]

It wasn't, IMO. Tuch, Krebs, 1 lottery protected 2022 first and a 2023 2nd (they both move 1 year later if Vegas drafts in the top 10 this season), while also sending a 2023 3rd back to Vegas.... There is the issue of will Eichel be able to return from this surgery plus he had to to go to a team willing to take on his full salary. Adams wouldn't make the trade without that being included. With Tuch also being injured and having not played this season, Vegas essentially only gave up Krebs from their current active roster. Vegas made this trade for the future, not for now. For Eichel to play this regualr season, Vegas will have to lose another 10M+ in salary somewhere considering they are now using $10,369,239 in LTIR. Even with all that, I have no idea how Vegas is going to sign even half of their FAs next season. Current projected 2022-23 cap hit is 78.735M. Projected cap is still flat at 81.5M. They have 7 RFAs and 5 UFAs. Depth in Vegas is going to get ugly next season - you know - kind of like where Buffalo has been for years.

[gaijin]

That's all it took to land Eichel?

[theohall]

That's all it took, but it also meant taking on a full 10M AAV for 5 years contract with no guarantee Eichel will play again. Blues could have made a similar deal but at the cost of busting up what looks like a really good team, right now, with the potential to be really good for at least 2 more years, without Eichel.

From what I've read, the sticking point for other teams was taking on the full contract. Adams wouldn't budge on it.

[glen a richter]

The Hawks fired Jeremy Colliton.

I maintain that in situations like this it's complete bullshit to fire the coach. It's like hiring a chef, giving him buckets of cow manure and then firing him when people stop eating at the restaurant. If you don't intend to give the coach players they can conceivably work with then for damn sure don't blame them when the team doesn't perform. I'm sure Derek King will really get better results from the same bucket of cow crap. Happy to see Chicago doing terrible, but I do feel bad for Colliton.

[theohall]

This is more Chicago cleaning house from everything Bowman did. They just can't replace the players, yet. And it wasn't just Colliton, it was the assistants, too. Outside of Bowman overpaying players and not really drafting that well, this crap started when they fired Mike Kitchen without Q's approval, because Q didn't want Bowman's best boy, Barry Smith, anywhere near practices or near the bench during games. Then Bowman fires Q and replaces him with a completely unready Colliton. He'd coached a whopping one full season in the AHL after his four seasons in the Swedish Hockey League where he basically only had one season over .500. All this crap in Chicago is because of Stan Bowman - even how they chose to handle the scandal was Bowman's call, with input from Q at the time, but Bowman had final say. Couldn't happen to a better organization.

Another knock against Colliton - he didn't spend time anywhere as an assistant. He went straight to an HC role immediately after he finished his playing career. One thing I've heard said about NHL coaches, is they need time as an assistant to better understand how to handle the players - especially NHL players. Colliton's never had that experience.

[glen a richter]

Total asshole move by the Stars to healthy scratch that Tufte kid in the Wild game.

[theohall]

And Bowness, the head coach, is claiming the decision what out of his hands, which we all know is total crap since the head coach decides who plays and who doesn't when deciding who to healthy scratch. The only lineup change was playing Kiviranta, who was a healthy scratch the prior two games, over Tufte. Yet, supposedly, Bowness "didn't know" until 4 pm on game day of this decision, and supposedly, it wasn't his. He specifically named Dave Zeis whose the friggin' trainer... Total crap move by Bowness and complete BS him trying to blame it on someone else.

Article about this

Yeah, Rick

I’m trying to keep the lines together. I like the makeup and chemistry of the lines right now, the way they look. Now, it’s fine to put it on paper and say it looks good. They’ve got to do it on the ice. They all had good games last game. I’d love to see the lines the same way, get something going here, some continuity.

So let's scratch one of the players from those two wins. Good one.

[glen a richter]

Word on the street is that there’s some discussions starting about send a team back to Quebec and resuscitating the Nordiques franchise. Best bet would be Arizona heading north at some point. It was entirely assholish to move a team to Arizona in the first place so that would be righting a wrong for sure.

[theohall]

Ottawa is another option. The Senators owner Melnyck has wanted a new arena since 2016, but it got killed in court. He claims he has plans to build a new one in Kanata or Gatineau on land he owns over the next 5-10 years, but... there is the 18K seat Videotron Centre in Quebec which was finished in 2016 where only a junior team, the Remparts with Zachary Bolduc, currently playing in that building. While Melnyck says he wants to keep the team in Ottawa, he's the kind of owner whose said one thing and done another before.

My bet is Arizona gets moved though.

The biggest issue I see with moving Arizona to Quebec would be realignment. Without someone from the Eastern Conference moving to the Western Conference, they would be the only Western team in the Eastern time zone - like Detroit dealt with for forever. And that would be true of whichever team moved also.