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Link67

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Everything posted by Link67

  1. Sigh.. The more I watch alzner, the more I ask myself, Why?
  2. I've got a funny feeling this is the game that leaves anyone's lingering hopes for a playoff revival face down in the mud during a rainstorm. Kinda like Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai when he gets beat with a wood stick.. into the mud.. during a storm. This is going to be painful...
  3. I just love the fact he scored a goal reminiscent of a Kovalev snipe off the right wall like that, been awhile...
  4. Oh Yes, because Sergachev playing 18 min a night on this D instead of Drouin would have really made all the difference right? This team would be right in there battling with the Leafs and Tampa if only they still had Sergachev... Drouin is slowly but surely showing signs that the task of centering a top line is probably suffocating him for a variety of reasons, that doesn't mean he is playing with no heart, or drive, he is simply struggling more and more to be productive from a position he is not as comfortable with as it was first thought. It is starting to make more and more sense why Tampa used him as a winger the whole time and why he looked much more dynamic and productive in Tampa than he does here. Had we made the trade, and then used every available dollar to keep Radulov and Markov on this team instead of everything else that went down, we would VERY likely be in a different position right now. This team needed some extra punch up front after last season, the Drouin trade was a step in the right direction to that end, everything that followed it was the problem that has led to this very moment.
  5. You know I look at this line up, and try to wrap my head around ways to make it more productive, I try to look at it in perspective. I am aware that Pacioretty and Drouin are producing well below their capabilities, that has its effect. I look at a guy like Galchenyuk just getting tossed around the line up the moment he farts the wrong way, that has its effect. I start to wonder if we just let Drouin try to get comfortable as a top center for the first time in his NHL career the entire season, or do we call it soon and Place him on the wing with Danault and Pacioretty, he would essentially become the Radulov, Shaw could go back to centering the 3rd line as he did last playoffs. It is a whole lot of wondering, and tempting tinkering, but ultimately it just looks like more of the same problems with different names in the mix. No matter how I tilt my head and look at this thing, we are still a team that unless everything is going optimally with the players on this roster, it gets away from us pretty quickly. So far we could easily say it has been less than optimal for Price to have a rough injured start, Pacioretty having a career worst start, and Drouin slowing right down in his production the further along this season goes, like the noose is getting tighter instead of looser. We have to find away to string a very over .500 run for the next few weeks, before we have to start praying every week that the teams ahead of us crash and burn. And then what? does this team slipping in the back window of the playoffs matter? Does it have anymore than a snowballs chance in the desert to get past anyone in the top 3? Do we stress ourselves out over making the playoffs by the skin of our teeth just to get bounced out in 5 games? I need to see some positive roster moves in the next little while to get me re-invigorated for a playoff run, other wise I'd rather finish 12th than 9th. Also I think missing the playoffs would cement Bergevin's fate as Done at the end of the season, making it might tempt the ownership to keep him around another year to see if he can right the ship he is currently sailing into the rocks. For me personally, what he does in the next month or so with the moves he makes to improve this team or not will make or break my view on whether or not he deserves the chance to see this thing through. He has put himself in a spot with me, where unless he has a gangbuster next couple months, he basically needs to be cut loose at seasons end.
  6. Based on what we have seen so far with this personnel management, he is more likely to be promoted to assistant GM than he is being Fired
  7. someone give him a chair to skate with, gotta go back to basics lol jokes aside, he is capable of so much more than what he showed his first game, I hope he gets his composure back going forward and showcase his brand of hockey that made him a standout in Laval and earned him the call up.
  8. There is no way at this point that Letang is anywhere near as capable as Weber is to hold down the fort as a top D-man for over 25min a night. Weber is simply a better defenceman, has been for years and still is. We don't need to trade a general on the backend for a broke down version of karlsson. That would be a loss for us quite easily, then you factor in the injury prone nature of Letang and the loss becomes even greater. And after that type of trade, imagine the fury from those who think this team is too soft already. You essentially trade the 2 guys who play with the most grit on the team for 2 softies.
  9. O'Rielly should be the target if he is in fact available, and yes he will cost us the most, but we have reached a point where the cost is no longer the issue. If we viable have assets that Buffalo is willing to take in a trade, no matter how costly, if there is something that we can put together to get them to say yes, it should be done. We have cap space, we have multiple picks in the first 2 rounds of the draft, we have young assets in the roster or swimming back and forth between the minors and the NHL. All of which must be considered available for a guy like O'Rielly, this window to get competitive and get something done is shrinking with or without the lacking strong Center line. We have to throw everything but the kitchen sink at this group for the next few years, and if it does in fact fail, at least you have left yourself with no other viable choice but a full re-build. We failed to bolster this thing during the off season and it has been biting us in the butt since, stern negotiations, patience, and overestimation of current assets have put us in this position. Smack in the middle of what was supposed to be a window we should try to take full advantage of, we have essentially wasted a year of that window mismanaging and tripping over ourselves because of the sins of the summer. Not being anything less than overly aggressive in pursuit of player of the caliber of O'Rielly would be a farce in the current situation, or any other quality top 6 center that is or may become available in the near future. From Tavares to O'Rielly and Stasny or RNH, we need to add to this Center line desperately, and we need to aim and try hard to the add top quality guys first before we move down the list. But make no mistake, any of those assets is better than status quo, and we have been in status quo since June 28th, and it has been a frustrating journey thus far.
  10. you know the season is a gong show when Game threads start being hijacked by NBA parity talks lol. But I will add that this season, the Celtics have at least made the East a 2 horse race instead of 1.
  11. Beat me to it, my thoughts exactly. He is atleast not looking disengaged and lack luster like he did to start the year, now his errors on the ice are something you have to live with. You can penalize him for looking like he is out for a skate, but this type of player will ALWAYS be susceptible to errors without the puck from time to time, not sure I understand the need to try and convert him into the next Datsyuk or Bust. You think Gaudreau got benched for the 2 or 3 blatant giveaways I saw him create during the game? Of course not, because at any given moment he can come down on a rush and create a scoring chance only players like him can. You live with and try to mitigate the errors, because ultimately there are only a handful, if that, of players who can do what Galchenyuk can offensively on this team. We have to work towards trading him now, not because I want to, or because I even think it is remotely a good idea, because I don't. But because on the current path I see for him, he will suffocate to a state where his value is a complete joke, and seeing him traded for half of what he is worth only to watch him have a meteoric rise in a different market afterwards would be a double whammy I have no interest in dealing with. Exactly the way I am sure Boston feels every time they look at Seguin in Dallas..
  12. Ah Fernando... I can still hear Bob Cole saying it over and over PIS - ANIIII......SCORES
  13. Patrice Brisebois, no D-man since I have been following this team, pissed me off more for years and years than that guy.
  14. It is like I mentioned in a previous post, this D is very soft once you take Weber out of it. There is no way if you bump, stumble or fart near Price while Weber is out there that you don't get ragdolled out of the crease, face washed, and likely have a hole burned into your soul by the gaze of death. It is just a different dynamic when he is there, there is an intimidation factor, and a je ne sais quoi to keep players honest more often than not, and he doesn't even need to fight to make it happen, he just does. It is not like Alzner is going to put the fear of god in these guys, so basically when players like Smith look up and down the bench right now and ask themselves who is going to come and push me around if I bump Price "accidentally". It simply isn't going to be as daunting of a task as when a guy like Weber is starring at you from the bench, or he takes a couple strides towards you after you have done something stupid near our net and you know whatever is coming, won't feel very good.
  15. Joe Morrow, the re-incarnation of M-A Bergeron
  16. I mean, when this 4th line looks as good as they did for that whole shift, you k now the other team is asleep at the wheel.. not complaining though, someone bring them a blanket too, make sure they stay sleeping.
  17. Really? to each his own I guess I don't see how we take a step forward with that trade, statistically similar, salary cap hit is nearly half, and you lose all that lead by example fire and tenacity every shift, banged up 2016 Gallagher is one thing, but the one I see now is nothing short of a lightning rod since game 1.
  18. What a Laser Beam fired top Shelf by Web....I mean Drouin!
  19. And to think we were considering trading him for Nugent-Hopkins at some point during the summer..
  20. Well considering we have picked 25th or higher in the 1st round in 4 of the last 5 years, doesn't exactly provide you with the best opportunity to find a Leon Draisatl from that range. The year we picked Juulsen, the only top 6 player picked after him doing anything of significance at the NHL level is Sebastian Aho, ONE player. The year we picked Scherbak, The only top 6 players picked after him making an impact for their teams are Brayden Point, and Victor Arvidsson, TWO players. The year we picked Sergachev, we turned it into a top 6 player currently centering our Top line, and regardless if thats where he remains the rest of his time, he will surely be a top line player for us. You have to put things in perspective, what i just pointed out is the reality of the situation, 20/20 goggles on and all, 3 players out of hundreds, have made an impact on their team's top 6 that were picked after our own pick. Those teams would be lying to you if they said it wasn't BS luck that they turned out the way they did, or they would have picked them a heck of a lot sooner. Couple all those facts with the less than ideal track record of Sylvain Lefebvre developing some of our promising players in the minors, and you have your explanation. It is significantly easier to stock pile quality prospects when you are picking in the top 15 for several years in a row, if you nail those picks, and couple them with a nice late round find here and there, you end up with 4 to 6 real good players who can make an impact for you in a span of a few years. Trying to do that from nearly the 30th spot year after year, coupled with a mismanagement of assets and poor player development at the AHL level, and you end up with where we are now. A team who should be contending but can't, and no future impact players in the pipeline to extend the window to do so in sight.
  21. That Claude Julien face pretty much sums up what mine must look like when I try to find the words to respond to co-workers who ask why Morrow is playing so much for us.
  22. I dont think MB has entered the Houle category yet, but he has entered the category where a change is needed because we are trending in the wrong direction. He has been here long enough, he has hit some homers, he has made some obvious blunders and ultimately has failed to trend upward for nearly 3 years. His plan didn't work, and he has very little assets left to bolster this roster. Do we leave him in to try and salvage this thing? or do we give him the boot and let someone else decide how to bolster it or re-shape it. I'm not sure giving the guy who's multiple plans already failed a chance to plan the next phase of this is the right move. But regardless of all that, MB certainly has more very good moves on his resume than Houle. Certainly has a better team record than Houle during his tenure, and the team has gone further than any Houle team did. So to answer the question for myself, No, i wouldnt have made any argument of any kind to see Houle stay another day longer than he did.
  23. Another thing i notice is, when you take Weber out of this D, they become softer than a 70 year old who forgot his viagra. Nice goal for Galchenyuk, smart move by Byron to shoot off the far pad on purpose for a rebound chance.
  24. Good lord this 4th line is utterly useless, out for a skate, a hit or 2 then dump it and repeat next time.
  25. A press conference to announce what exactly? That there is no help to be found, that none of the other teams are throwing out life lines in the water? We are firing Bergevin and Julien together with 5 years each left on their current deals? Have to put things in perspective first, the team is currently playing poorly, it may have played poorly for too long to matter now but maybe not, the bottom line is there is no magical announcement, be it a firing or a desperate trade that is going to fix this overnight. The only thing that should be happening if this derailing continues, is a massive scale, organizational meeting, where a decision is made about how to proceed with this team. Do we make moves in an effort to bolster it, do we make moves in an effort to re-tool it with hopes of coming back stronger in a couple years, or do we make moves in an effort to rebuild it, and come back in 4 to 5 years with a team able to compete with higher hopes. those are really the only options left besides hoping this team goes on a 7 - 1 - 2 run during its next 10 games
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