tomh009

Ullmark or Swayman? Will Krejci be back? And Pastrnak needs to get to his usual form.

You can move up by winning twice in a five-year period, no more. But since the Habs didn’t move up last year, that doesn’t count against this rule.

Drafted players are usually the very top players on the junior teams, so they end up taking faceoffs not only against other drafted players but against many who will never play professional hockey, so their faceoff win percentages end up being inflated. And even of the drafted players, fewer than half make it to the NHL, so the faceoff opposition is really far beyond what they see in junior. If you don't want to believe me, that's OK, too.

Indeed. The reality is that Hutson > Mailloux > Beck.

Yes ... but junior faceoff wins don't translate to NHL faceoff wins quite so easily. (That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to seeing Beck in a Habs sweater...)

Don’t look now …👀

I would argue that what Armia does is actually good fit for the roster: we don’t have a surplus of effective two-way forwards with Danault and Lehkonen gone. The contract is the problem, not the fit.

At the moment I'm pinning my hopes on Beck to grow into that role, but he's still got a long way to go. In the meantime, I think that Armia is the closest we have to that, and he's definitely not a Danault or a Lehkonen.

I really don’t foresee Hughes signing a UFA this year, unless it’s on a bargain contract. Trade for an RFA, maybe within the realm of possibility. Why? First, Habs are not ready to contend. Second, we have too many veterans blocking the young players’ way already. And third, the UFA market is fairly weak this summer anyway.

Just like it did this year.

2-0 Bruins after two--with only 12 shots for the Panthers.

The 2022 bonus overage was $1.132M so not a big difference for the Habs.

So, the Leafs spanked the Lightning by a nearly identical score to the Leafs-Habs game just about a week earlier. Just saying ...

I suspect that Mesar may well play another OHL season.

Overall, there hasn't been a lot of spectacular goaltending yet in the first few nights of playoff hockey: I think the goalie save percentages are way off their regular-season norm.

3-0 on 19 shots now, 14 minutes remaining.

If we look at just the drafting (which is what you were complaining about) rather than development, we have a reasonable number of good picks: Price, McDonagh, Pacioretty, Galchenyuk, Juulsen, Sergachev and Kotkaniemi. Not all equally good but some draft years are weak and some years the Habs picked late. Still, seven decent picks in fifteen years is not nothing. Now, development has also been a problem, but a separate problem...

Indeed. However, need to remember that the data just indicates which team made the pick, not which one developed the player. While fourth-line filler players are significantly less likely to hit 200 games, I do agree that WAR would be much better. But I don't have any easy way to merge that data into my Excel sheet.

I don’t know about the secret, but I think those teams may have done more effective amateur scouting than most others. There is certainly randomness in the results but I am certain that evaluation skills also play a part.

A lottery in the first round, a crap shoot in the rest! 😂😂😂

To me, the bigger point is that three of their top players (Pastrnak, Bergeron and Marchand) are late picks, and shrewd/lucky picking has enabled them to become a top contender without (earned) lottery picks.

2-0 London over Kitchener after the first; Mailloux 1a on a power-play goal.

For the 2009-2018 drafts (ignoring later ones as may be too early to judge), 243 players picked in second round or later have played at least 200 games. That's an average of about eight successful picks per team. Anaheim, Carolina, LA and Pittsburgh all had 12 picks with over 200 games Colorado had 3, NYR and Vancouver only 4 I think these differences are big enough to be statistically significant.

One or two finds is likely random variation. But if a team is consistently able to find NHL players in the later rounds, it's less likely to be just random variation.

Danault the assist on the PPG that sent it to overtime!