NHL Thread

[southp]

if im canadian, id be asking where the hell claude giroux is on the olympic squad.

luckily, i am not canadian, im american. so instead im asking where the hell bobby ryan is

I think they took Benn over Giroux. Given the season Benn's having I can see this. I don't understand taking Nash over Lucic. Lucic provides everything that Nash does but better. Would love to have seen St Louis mae the team but not sure at who's expense.

I would have taken Harding over Smith but neither was going to see action, so pretty much a mute point.

I think everyone's kind of asking about Giroux, but I don't think he was an obvious enough selection that anyone really cares that much. It's not like he's clearly better than Crosby, Stamkos, Tavares, Toews, Bergeron, Getzlaf, Duchene, etc... Canada's kind of ridiculously deep at centre.

If I could make any changes, I would probably leave Nash and Kunitz off and include St. Louis and Giroux/Staal. Maybe Seabrook instead of Hamhuis and one of the young goalies instead of Smith.

The point about depth at centre is probably at the heart of the decision. To win this tournament you are looking at a team coming together over the span of 6 games, and you can't afford to be fumbling around in a new position. People argue that a guy with Giroux's talent can play anywhere, but when competition is so stiff I don't know if Yzerman and co. wanted to risk those in-tournament adjustments.

It's the same reason they went with 4 LH and 4 RH d-men. Seabrook (a right d-man) is probably better than Hamhuis, but not when it comes to playing Left-D specifically.

[Simple Torture]

southp, I had a dream last night that I drove up to Montreal for a Bruins-Habs game. We should've hung out!

Haha... you wanna hang out together in your dreams? Sounds like a plan!

Tell me, when you dream of a Habs-Bruins game does Marchard still get leveled by Subban?

In my dream, someone slipped while skating by Chara and everyone in the arena called 911.

[Mecca]

In my dreams, Chara actually gets called for cross-checking

[surfndestroy]

PhilPritchard - What's up with the leafs? They're not as bad as their recent record indicates but they weren't as good as hteir first month record made them out to be. Do they have the players to bring down their shots against per game?

[philpritchard]

PhilPritchard - What's up with the leafs? They're not as bad as their recent record indicates but they weren't as good as hteir first month record made them out to be. Do they have the players to bring down their shots against per game?

They should be well rested tonight since they haven't played a game since the Winter Classic.

I know they weren't as good as their record suggested early on, but they were taking advantage of the chances they did get and they were getting phenomenal goaltending. It really pisses me off. You have two goalies who have never had a particularly heavy workload in their lives, and they're both dominating while splitting time. Of course, splitting time can't possibly work (even though it already was working spectacularly well) because that's what everyone says. So they decided to give Bernier a whole bunch of time (six games in a row) and he started to struggle. Then, after having him on the bench for three weeks, they brought Reimer in and guess what? He struggled too!

Goaltending is a small part of the problem right now and is probably the least of their worries, but it frustrates me to no end that they took the one part of the team that was keeping them in the playoff race and decided that's where they needed to make a change.

[---]

What's up with the leafs?

firing brian burke, promoting dave nonis, and retaining randy carlyle happened

[---]

Goaltending is a small part of the problem right now and is probably the least of their worries, but it frustrates me to no end that they took the one part of the team that was keeping them in the playoff race and decided that's where they needed to make a change.

randy carlyle is a first-class stooge

[Peeps]

[Peeps]

http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.co ... e-off-gif/

[philpritchard]

What's up with the leafs?

firing brian burke, promoting dave nonis, and retaining randy carlyle happened

Before Burke was fired, I thought the Leafs would be stupid to let him go. Shortly after it happened I started to think it wasn't such a bad move because Nonis made a few moves that I don't think Burke would have made to improve the team. At this point, however, I'm back to thinking Burke would be the perfect guy to have in charge.

I still don't know what to think of Carlyle. He makes some player decisions with regards to ice-time and healthy scratches that I just don't understand. It reminds me of late-career Pat Quinn.

[surfndestroy]

What's up with the leafs?

firing brian burke, promoting dave nonis, and retaining randy carlyle happened

Before Burke was fired, I thought the Leafs would be stupid to let him go. Shortly after it happened I started to think it wasn't such a bad move because Nonis made a few moves that I don't think Burke would have made to improve the team. At this point, however, I'm back to thinking Burke would be the perfect guy to have in charge.

I still don't know what to think of Carlyle. He makes some player decisions with regards to ice-time and healthy scratches that I just don't understand. It reminds me of late-career Pat Quinn.

How aligned are Nonis and Carlyle with regards to the roster? I think Carlyle is a good coach who's getting frustrated with the makeup of the roster. I think Nonis is really good at contract management and getting decent return on trades but he hasn't shown me that he's ever adopted any vision on what his team should be. His achilles heel seems to be the same as Burkes, drafting. Both were pretty bad in Vancouver and they didn't improve much in Toronto.

[philpritchard]

How aligned are Nonis and Carlyle with regards to the roster? I think Carlyle is a good coach who's getting frustrated with the makeup of the roster. I think Nonis is really good at contract management and getting decent return on trades but he hasn't shown me that he's ever adopted any vision on what his team should be. His achilles heel seems to be the same as Burkes, drafting. Both were pretty bad in Vancouver and they didn't improve much in Toronto.

It's hard to say how aligned they are, but a couple of times I've felt like Nonis has made a move purely because Carlyle was misusing a player (like Holland's recent demotion... he was playing really well, then he was suddenly only getting 4 minutes a night, so he was sent to the Marlies.)

Nonis has only been in charge for one draft so far. There have been questions about his first round pick (Frederik Gauthier) seeming to stagnate this year, but he also drafter Carter Verhaeghe (3rd round, having a major breakout this year), Fabrice Herzog (5th round, adjusting very well in his first year in North America) and Andreas Johnson (7th round, among the best two or three junior players in Sweden this year, ahead of 14th overall pick Alexander Wennberg in team scoring).

It's obviously WAY too early to say anything about them, but it looks solid so far. I mainly agree on Burke, but at the very least they have a decent pool of prospects working their way up through the system, many of which are fairly late picks.

[philpritchard]

I'm feeling a bit better today.

[MattA75]

I miss paaks, I can only imagine how he'd be defending the Canucks after that debacle last night

[surfndestroy]

I miss paaks, I can only imagine how he'd be defending the Canucks after that debacle last night

It was brutal hearing the Vancouver hockey commentators applauding the Canucks gong show in LA, especially given that they loss. If that had been Boston doing it to Vancouver, the same commentators would be saying that it was a disgrace to hockey and a black eye on the sport. Added to that was some Canuck players acting like they just showed the league how tough they are, while completely missing that they lost the game.

Seeing them come back the next game and lay an egg was great. Seeing them lose composure in the third period was icing on the cake. I felt for their backup goalie who was just thrown to the wolves after Lack was pulled.

When the players think that losing their composure is part of being tough, they've been lead astray. Canucks problem is not toughness, it's scoring goals. So if they want to act like Sistito and a few others being idiots is a step towards winning hockey they may not even make the playoffs.

[surfndestroy]

I'm feeling a bit better today.

Toronto deserved the two points. Bernier was solid, Rask was not.

Boston just has some games where they can't hold a lead. Plus they have to be getting tired of concussions and other injuries. They need another true top four d-man with Seidenberg out for the year.

[RussellManiac12]

http://deadspin.com/predators-goalie-ca ... 1503152381

[warehouse]

lol @ torts

[Peeps]

lol @ torts

aside from your ex coach is there a bigger cry baby leading a team (aside from crosby)?

[surfndestroy]

lol @ torts

aside from your ex coach is there a bigger cry baby leading a team (aside from crosby)?

Torts is such an idiot. He matched his idiots against Calgary's starting lineup. The Canucks have no idea what team toughness is if this is the road they're going down. Three out of the last four games they've been complete clowns and only managed to score three goals. Torts should know that clown hockey is not winning hockey.