Link67

Nope, who are we kidding, run for your lives!!

I'm just going to come out and say it, but the pair of Chiarot and Weber has sold me with this kind of performance against this kind of talent they had to face all night. They also happen to be the 2 most improved, "Got their games back on the rails" players on the D. Weber is still a #1, and Chiarot is top 4, it was all premature panic early on from the media and fans in both their cases. They both had shaky starts to their respective season, that period of time seems to be a small smudge in the rearview mirror for both of them with each passing game, they have both been nothing short of very solid for weeks. And now in a stroke of genius/luck, also happen to form a very solid and reliable pair despite the stylistic mismatch on paper, they move the puck efficiently, they are exhausting to face in front of the net and in the corners, their work at the offensive zone blue line is simple and effective. I like it, I like it a lot

Boy oh boy, you and a few others can always be counted on to allow your disdain for Bergevin to cloud most rational judgement revolving around any conversation about the guy. We're not only fabricating scenarios now where NHL teams are , allegedly, not constantly trying to become cup contenders and then hopefully, cup winners, but also alluding to boldness as the key ingredient missing to have true success. By your Cup or Bust logic, I assume David Poile is as incompetent as they come, be it he has yet to win a Cup in Nashville since 97. Perhaps you also think Doug Wilson a terribly inept GM, considering his multiple failed cup runs since 2003. Since when, in a league of 30 or more teams, has winning a cup become the defining measuring stick to judge a GMs work? A 1 in 30 chance is all you get to be considered a good NHL GM? Really??? It is and always should be, the overall success or failure of their body of work, every GM in this league is going to hit and miss, be it in a trade, a signing, or a draft pick. What ultimately matters is whether you have a GM in place who can hit more than he misses, whether he can slam home a home run every so often to help the team overcome a hurdle. And if that team is lucky enough, that kind of track record could lead them to becoming a team who has a shot at going far, which can then become a team, where if all goes fantastically well, and the stars align, can potentially win a cup. It is like you are saying Yzerman did a shitty job as GM in Tampa because they didn't win the cup while he was there. He did tremendous work, did more good moves than bad, drafted well, and turned them into a very good team, they may not have won a cup yet, but that does not discredit his overall work as an NHL GM, it was top notch. Bergevin has made his blunders, he has hit his home runs, and he did in fact have a real busted up offseason a couple of years ago, he wasn't fired, and given the opportunity to implement a new plan, knowing full well, this time, its failure will be his demise. I am sorry he wasn't fired 2 or 3 years ago as you so desperately had hoped, but the guy has been nothing short of solid since. He has executed his plan pretty admirably, we all know what is going on here, we are in the midst of a quick turn around rebuild, driven by drafting, youth, and sprinkle of patience so we can watch it grow. We have stock piled picks for 2 summers now, soon to be 3, we have drafted well in each of those, we have managed our cap well enough that there is room to go big game hunting if the opportunity presents itself, yet the willingness to push forward with our youth and whatever comes with that in the meantime, instead of collapsing onto plan G as we have in the past. Some of you are still shitting on 2016 -2017 Bergevin, in nearly 2020, we have been watching a different machine running here for the past 2 years folks, open your eyes and accept it, judge that, because the past, it already got forgiven when he wasn't fired, might as well move forward like the rest of us.

Yes, he is relied upon, and ripped on way too much, he rarely gets full credit and always takes more blame than he should. But that's nothing new, it has been this way since he dominated the league like no other modern day goalie did a few years ago..

If Letang was in fact a LHD, He would be heavily in the Habs rumor mill for quite some time now, and likely a great fit along side Weber.

Come on, really? I'll begin to get worried when he is still rockin out 30 point seasons at age 22, and still being sheltered with 12 min of ice time. Until then he is just a kid with immense talent and potential who is honing his craft and learning on the job.

Drouin is looking like the top line player he was billed as, I'm honestly watching him and just continually going, "Man another great shift by this guy" Awesome stuff from Jo.

Certainly a wise choice.. If a system of the sort needs to be in place, perhaps just simply a "Like" button being the only option could work. If the content you are posting is something people get behind then you can gain "Likes" and if your content is something they don't, then you gain nothing. A positive contributor to the site could rack up likes, while someone less so, would rack them up at a very slow pace, if at all, nothing malicious can be done to circumvent it.

If they are willing to retain salary to move him, we should be listening, but at full cap hit, I agree it is too much.

Thoroughly enjoyed that lol

At some point, Petry will stop being one of the most underrated Dmen in the league, right?

Mats Sundin hopefully

I don't know who's knickers you bunched up, but lately you seem to be instantly downvoted regardless of content, i've seen the same constant 2 downvotes on even your most insightful posts of late, that childish crap needs to stop. Clearly a couple haters are abusing the downvote system in a manner it wasn't intended..

Come on guys does anyone actually believe Douglas Murray or Folin are capable of sniping one the way Chiarot did in Buffalo, or make the pass that sprung Drouin to his goal against St. Louis? Seems the guy gets pegged in this hole already because he is a defensive Dman, that somehow means he can't skate, he can't pass the puck and make plays, or show some poise with the puck and score some timely goals for us. He looks like the guy he was with the Jets but going through a bit of an adjustment period to play within our style, not some dinosaur Dman with cement skates and a straight blade who is incapable of adjusting and evolving within our system, sheesh.

Well, i'll be honest, i'd rather the offensive potential of a line like Drouin - Domi - Suzuki, than Lehkonen - Domi - Suzuki

Speed? Lol he is usually the fastest skater on the ice during his shifts, come on now. Wouldn't expect a small forward to try and be tough, you don't see Gaudreau out there every night trying to show how tough he is, i'd still have him on my team in a heartbeat. Why does a player need an NHL comparable anyway? Half of the comparable players end up not having parallel careers anyway, it is a foolish thing to require to judge a players potential or predict it for that matter. There was no justification for why he was still available when we picked, this isn't 2004 anymore, the era of the Power Forward, the kid has the potential to make a lot of people eat crow for passing on him throughout his career, and it seems they are turning themselves inside out coming up with ridiculous reasoning to try and justify it. The devastation of his shot will far outweigh the detriment of his size when he reaches the NHL, he has come into the league, literally, during its most beneficial era for players like him. Quotes of the sort just go to show you there are still plenty of dinosaur mentalities within some of the front office's.

If you are not willing to give up blue chip prospects, how do you hope to get someone else's top line talent? 2nd rounders and 2nd line players are not what you have to package together in any circumstance to acquire the Laine's and the Connor's of this world. It has to be 1st rounders and top 5 organizational prospects, anything less and you are just getting hung up on. For a Connor or a Laine, you have to be prepared to offer Drouin or Gallagher, a 1st round pick, and Romanov. There is no conversation on either front without a serious proposal of the sort. If you are willing or not to make that kind of offer, determines whether you would or wouldn't acquire those types of players.

Make it a 1st and they likely go for it, are we willing to do it? That's the question.

With respect, the context being missed here is this team has gone into a full blown retool and building through youth for over a year now, expecting to make the playoffs during such a transition is setting the bar at an unrealistically high level to promote the rhetoric that he is continually failing. MB has not been very good during his tenure as a whole, he has also not been nearly as terrible as some make him out to be, the truth, as usual, is somewhere between both biased parties of the argument. He mismanaged some assets and even an entire offseason, he has also surprisingly shown great poise and solid asset management and strategy since embarking on this retool, it has thus far been the beginning of a redemption story for him. If you are going to give the guy a chance to redeem himself from past mistakes, then you have to, at some point, put those mistakes in the past and judge him based on what he is doing while trying to redeem himself. I have little complaints since the retool started about him, with the exception of the current passive offseason, but I do understand the offseason is far from over and things can happen by training camp. All in all, what I am seeing is a team with a top 5 prospect pool in the league, and miles away from any kind of cap hell, those are his dues to collect, there is no other regime to give credit to, there is no one else responsible for this current situation. So while it is easy for some people to continually pile on the dog poop about his past blunders, those same people are seemingly nowhere to be found when it comes to giving an honest unbiased assessment of his retool management. While I think it is easy enough to see why they steer clear of any positive assessment and only jump in the fray when there is mud to fling around and dead horses to beat on, it doesn't make it right by any stretch.

Oh crap, you mean i've been looking at this the wrong way the entire time?!?! It's just like golf and you need the lowest amount of points to be the winning?! I'll see myself out...

Can we please stop with the notions that we have to poop the bed for years on end to become an instant contender, and that we have to trade players based on age regardless of where your team is in its building arc? It is seriously ridiculous to consider both of those things to be absolutes, when it comes to how to reach contender status. Did you see St.Louis or Boston bottom feeding for years during the last 5 to 7 years to get where they are today? Did they trade away all their veterans on the wrong side of their prime to achieve their current status? How about San Jose? How many seasons did they spend bottom feeding to acquire a contender during the last 5 to 7 seasons? How many veterans did they trade away in that time? There are several different ways to build a contending team, but ultimately a balance of good drafting, good trades to achieve roster balance, good contracts and cap management are the keys to getting there.

Come on man.... Using the Leafs in any conversation about being ok with the cap right now is ludicrous, they have had to reshape their roster in a significant way to try to get around their cap issues, have a handful of important expiring contracts next summer that will be nearly impossible to hold onto. They have their best player without a contract and are needing to scrounge every last penny of cap space to even attempt to facilitate that signing.

Holland you fox...