Neech

Would Smith and Benson rank above Cooley going into last year?

I hope Marchessault takes the Conne Smythe. Vegas has such a balanced attack so it's hard to single anyone out. At least a win for the Golden Shites is a win for Canadian hockey, and one higher spot for our pick.

Stutzle for Gallagher? The man is a lifelong Habs fan from NDG. Now's the chance to make it count.

More Tkachuk magic. It's crazy how often he's Johnny on the spot.

Gotta give Marinaro sauce his props on this one - he had the scoop a few days early.

Ça sent la coupe dans cinq ans!

This pleases Hockey Junkie, so it pleases me too.

I sure hope Marinaro sauce is correct and we lock him up posthaste to what sounds like a great number.

I was trying to think of the best Swedish Hab in my fandom (roughly this millenium) and drew a blank. Freakin Crankshaft??

I'm hoping one of these American teams talks themselves into Smith over Michkov or Carlsson.

Gally springs to mind, seems like he had the underdog mentality from day one. Always considered too small, and always outworked everyone else to get where he was. As for Price, his underdog factor is mitigated in my mind by how wealthy he was (although that's almost all hockey players these days). His mom was a chief and his dad could afford to buy an airplane to fly him to games. Then he was drafted at the top of the first round so he was never held back professionally, in fact he was given opportunities before he probably deserved them. Tootoo and Cheechoo seem like much bigger underdog stories as native players.

I'm with you but there are rumblings that Hugort has no interest in him.

Russia has already had a lot of bad stuff happen to it, probably more than any western country. It was the biggest sufferer from both world wars and then had decades of Soviet repression. The Russia we have today has been through the wringer already, and is not a great place because it's been a victim of history. America's proportion of prison population today is comparable to the Soviet Union under the worst of the gulag system. The 'liberal democracy' facade is a function of the American elite's ability to export its atrocities (post-slavery) rather than inflict them on their own populace. As this power wains we're seeing the slide into authoritarianism, as you put it.

Barring a Stars miracle, I'll be cheering for Florida by default. Always hated the Panthers though. Barkov is a hell of a gamer and would be talked about in the same breath as Mackinnon and Matthews if he was Canadian or at least in a bigger market.

Good Canadian boy Jamie Benn making sure game 3 is wrapped up early.

Wow, Hutson looked shot out of a cannon there. I heard that his skating needed some improvement but it seems like it's coming along. And what a shot at full speed!

Hopefully we learned from these mistakes. These moves, along with a few other like the Slaf dossier, seem baffling from the outside and we can only hope that we're missing crucial information.

We had a crap roster that overachieved because of Marty. On paper we should have been bottom 3.

The eastern teams seem a cut above the western teams - I think either of the Canes or Cats could beat their western counterparts. Dallas had Vezina level goaltending that seems to have disappeared in the playoffs. Hintz and Heiskanen are fun players for the Stars. Robertson seems to have disappeared.

I didn't like daddy Tkachuk so I'm disinclined to like his offspring, but they seem like great players. Florida is looking like the team of destiny right now, and to think if the Pens didn't shit the bed after the deadline they'd be out of the playoffs and we'd have a pick in the mid-teens.

At this point I'm hoping one of the teams above us picks Smith and either Michkov or Carlsson fall to us. (If we pass on Michkov in this scenario I'll be very disappointed, even if it appears likely that we would) If we do end up with Will Smith, I of course will duly get jiggy with it.

Yeah, the Stars are somehow the least detestable team, and I hated the Stars as a kid. Maybe my four least favourite teams in the league (besides Leafs and Bruins). My friend has a big wager on the Stars, so I guess it's them.

Maybe the Coyotes will FINALLY move after a vote for a new arena lost. The ideal spot IMO would obviously be the Nordiques, but that's not likely unless ownership is ready to really overpay. KC and Houston seem pretty blah to me; at least KC doesn't already have an NBA team so there could be more attention there, but the Houston market is hard to overlook.

It seems like there's a clearcut top 4, although Michkov might fall out of it. Kind of reminds me of the KK year where Dahlin and Svechnikov were the clear top 2 and we had the third pick.

Must be a special kind of hell to be an Oilers fan. Have two of the very best players in the world, but cannot find a goalie to save their lives. What would it take as a sweetener to get out of the Campbell contract?