Rangers fell apart long before Hank went down. Their best players are a winger and a goalie, which is not how you win in the NHL. And without McDonagh they'll be lucky to win one game. They had their shot 2 years ago, but that train's gone. Add a whole bunch of overpaid underachievers and you have a recipe for disaster. Wouldn't be surprised if they missed the playoffs as soon as next season.
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The Everything NHL Thread
- Thread starter Jackal
- Start date
and it happened
as a kings fan rooting for the caps over every1else
Aaand the Caps are out, as are the Stars.
Would be cool to see the Preds advance to face the Blues. Would mean both teams were coming off of back-to-back 4-3 series. The Blues are abnormally clutch this post season.
rip preds
The Sharks played like, well, Sharks in the way they dispatched the Preds. Oh well, more of Brent Burns's beard on TV.
GO PEN!S
Go KINGS GO
It appears I have won both of the leagues I was in hehe.
I think I might be insane. I really hope Ovie can win it but I really really don't like the matchups they will have to go through.
Florida should have an easy ticket to the ECF, Rangers are done.
As a Ducks fan, I cannot overstate how much I HATE the Randy Carlyle re-hire. A demotion from Bruce Boudreau is bad enough, but to go to one of the worst coaches in the modern era is just woeful. I already accepted that they'd have to take a coaching downgrade, unless a first-timer ended up being the next Jon Cooper, but this is beyond me. This team is going to waste the prime years of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, as well as the last couple years (if not the very last one) of Ryan Kesler.
And please don't give me the "he won a Cup with Anaheim" stuff. Did that with some all-time greats on defense and winning 12 one-goal games in the postseason. Even John Tortorella has a ring this millennium, and he's not exactly a great modern coach either.
Fans of the other Western Conference teams should be thrilled.
And please don't give me the "he won a Cup with Anaheim" stuff. Did that with some all-time greats on defense and winning 12 one-goal games in the postseason. Even John Tortorella has a ring this millennium, and he's not exactly a great modern coach either.
Fans of the other Western Conference teams should be thrilled.
Leaf fans are also thrilled that someone else is inflicted with the pain we suffered
The Ducks have Dave Nonis too. In what world do they think that emulating the pre-Babcock Leafs would be a good idea?
Sigh.
EDIT: Also, imagine how good Chicago would be if they weren't so cap-strapped that they had to deal key players away just to manage having a core with Toews, Kane, a really underpaid Duncan Keith (by AAV), and Corey Crawford. Teravainen, Saad, Sharp, Leddy all gone in the last three offseasons alone.
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He is, but Torts is definitely closer to Carlyle than he is some of the above-average coaches, let alone the great ones of the modern era. Point is: neither of them having a Stanley Cup on their resume should be a primary factor in deciding to hire them to ru(i)n a team.
Imagine having to trade Brandon Saad and Teuvo Teravainen because you gave Bryan Bickell $16 Million. That would suck.
So Las Vegas is confirmed (not that there was much doubt about it, but it being announced as a real thing just sets it in stone). Not sure how competitive they'll actually be from the start (my guess: not very, but we'll see about that), and I wonder what kinds of trades we'll see teams make in the next year because of teams having to protect players with NMCs, as well as the other rules of the expansion draft. Teams like the Blue Jackets are going to have to get creative, since they already have six players with NMCs on their roster that are under contract for at least the next two seasons (Dubinsky, Clarkson, Hartnell, Foligno, Tyutin, and Bobrovsky). Might take eating salary or attaching a high draft pick/prospect with one of those deals.
I think it's cool Vegas was picked for the new franchise, sure there will be lots of bitching about how unviable it is, unfavorable comparisons to AZ, etc etc, but I'm sure they'll have a decent enough fan base. Will agree it's odd why Quebec City or somewhere in Canada isn't getting a team since Canada is so much more into hockey than the states.
Conference imbalance (East already outnumbers West 16-14 before expansion), lack of strength of the Canadian Dollar, and the league might not be able to field competitive expansion clubs if two are introduced to the NHL at once (with one, at least there's a chance).
Quebec will get theirs in a few years once the loonie rebounds