The Chicoutimi Cucumber

My hot take as well. Great trade, HuGo!!!

Bah. Brilliant, cap-friendly signing for them. Looks like he blinked.

"Intense interest" needn't imply desperation. All reports have the Habs heavily in on Dobson. Doesn't mean they're going to burn the house down in order to get him.

I have been wondering whether the intense interest in Dobson is a signal they're worried about Reinbacher. I don't think it has to be interpreted that way - DR could be 2-3 years away from making an impact and HuGo want to take the next step. Still, it could be an indication that their faith in Reinbacher as the team's future RD stud has slipped.

Reports are he's looking for somewhere in the region of $9-10 mil. Which makes sense for 50-70 point RD, but I don't like that stat line from last season.

Fair enough! The issue, of course, isn't gender - it's meddlesome ownership in general.

The wife???? Oh my frigging God... What both Van and Buf have in common is meddling, ding-a-ling owners.

My impression as well. Most of these seem like pretty owner-friendly amendments, but that tends to suit me fine, as my interest as a fan tends (not invariably) to align more closely with owners than players. A playoff salary cap will be very welcome, in principle. Surprised the players swallowed an 84-game sked, though. I get that the tedious preseason is shortened, but the season is long enough as it is. This will likely inch us closer to the NBA world of "resting" star players more frequently...which of course the next round of bargaining will probably try to fix.

You’re probably right - and I suspect it’ll take more than 8 mil (not sure about term; 3 seems fair). Does Tavares, Mr. Toronto, really want to go just anywhere, though, or would be prefer to stay within striking distance of his family etc.? If so, the Habs may have a genuine competitive advantage in the bidding over a good chunk of those teams. I’m not getting my hopes up, though. It’ll be a tough recruitment battle, and HuGo are too likely to err on the side of caution to take the big swing; plus if he mostly wants money then lower-tax jurisdictions have the edge, while if he wants a Cup, no doubt one of those US contenders will vacuum him up.

I tend to see FW as a bigger priority than D, myself. We need to improve everywhere, and certainly we need to replace Savard, but the really big holes seem to be up front - ? Of course, the market is what it is, and if help at D is more realistic, you take it.

Peterka wanted out, I thought 🤷‍♂️ Not much you can do but deal a guy in that case. The question would be whether they got good value back for the kid. Seems iffy to me, but they did get back what appear to be useful pieces. Buffalo has gotten to the point where I feel sorry for their fans - which, considering how much i tend to seethe with irrational and unforgiving hatred of historic Habs’ opponents, really says something about how wretched they have been for most of this century.

There's been little doubt about that for a while. I hope we don't sign him. He's a 25-goal guy expecting to be paid like a 40-goal scorer. Boeser has his limitations, but I do have a hard time seeing management's strategy in letting him walk. It's not so much that they didn't trade him at the deadline - that was probably an ownership thing - as the idea that they're better off without him. Presumably they feel they can upgrade at W, but Kane is nothing more than a band-aid. The fact that they are supposedly looping back with Pugh Suter about maybe re-signing him suggests to me that Rutherford-Alvinn may have misread the overall cap/trade/UFA/landscape - over-estimating how easy it will be to replace guys they've deemed expendabe - but we shall see.

Ahahahahaaa, Vancouver never disappoints from a sheer entertainment perspective. I enjoyed listening to the ranting and raging on the radio this morning. Personally, I’m in the minority on this: I think they’re likely get a motivated, focused Kane at the end of his contract, and they got him for nothing except cap space. I understand the concerns about locker room culture, but with Miller gone, I don’t think you can treat them all like porcelain dolls who will break just because a teammate rents a Rolls. To my mind, the real issues are age and health. But there again, they gave up almost nothing for him, so if he’s lost a step or is injured all the time, big whoop.

Very long, but other than that it seems like he’d be perfect 🤷‍♂️

At the end of the day, the goal is to improve your team. If a "winger with pop" does that, then great.

Well…maybe Chicago was onto something in unloading him? Conversely, some kids just do take longer to figure out the offseason stuff than others. This is one area where it still seems to be a bit like the old days; notwithstanding plans provided by the team, players are left mostly to their own devices and it doesn’t always work out. Or maybe his injury recovery messed up his conditioning process. 🤷‍♂️

Well, a resurgent Dach would be a game-changer, but only a fool would count on that. I get that drafting is key and that teams need draft capital, but frankly fans and media get waaaaay too excited about draft day. Most of those picks are going to come to diddly-squat.

Yup, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. 🤷‍♂️ The only guy I would be willing to break the bank on (i.e., heavily overpay) is Tavares on a short-term deal (2 years). Like most fans, I will be disappointed if (when?) the Habs come out of UFA season mostly empty-handed, but as I posted a while back, you’re better off waiting for new possibilities to open up, than to make a deal in a seller’s market that f**ks up your roster and cap structure for years to come.

Such a shame about Dach’s knee. You need some baseline level of luck, and we didn’t get it there. It all depends on our assessment of Mailloux, but I’m a “bird in the hand” kinda guy. Three draft spots - meh, not worth losing a significant asset for IMHO. Frankly I would not do any of the deals Alfredoh moots above.

Two cases stick in my mind, from back in the day, where teams were ridiculed for “crazy overpay” but ended up looking crazy like foxes: one was Chara, the other was Mark Streit, over whom the Islanders were openly laughed at, but who ended up being really quite a strong #1D for them. I’m sure there are others…but for every case like that there are a dozen bloated contracts that look appalling as they age. TBH it’s term I worry about more than cap hit. And my guess is that if we lose out on Granlund/Tavares it will be because we weren’t willing to lock in for crazy term.

I’ve thought of that too…could be a major competitive advantage for us, given that he’s at an age where family considerations are apt to weigh pretty heavily.

I think there is going to be a lot of massive sticker shock to a lot of fans - and some GMs - on July 1. Those GMs are going to be the ones left standing around dazed with no signings. I hope HuGo are working with a realistic sense of the marketplace and preparing accordingly.

Zegras for spare parts. Yeah, I'm surprised we weren't in on that, but what can you say? In HuGo we trust. Between Michkov and Zegras PHIL isn't afraid to take chances on players with red flags, that's for sure. By contrast, our management group has been more risk-averse. We'll see how it plays out.

4 X 8 is fine for Tavares. It'll look dubious on the back end, but good value in UFA terms. Suter would be a good signing - a Dvorak replacement but with greater potential to play up the lineup. But I worry more about overpaying in term and salary for middle-roster guys than for someone like Tavares, who still produces at elite or near-elite levels.

No question in my mind that Tavares would be the crown jewel.