The NHL Thread

maybe missing the net is the real way to beat bob

and that should be that for the series

props to florida, they look night and day to the team VGK ran over last year in the SCF. now they are well disciplined, good team work, content to grind and win puck battles along the boards and are really playing good defense. assuming this doesn't go haywire, maurice has to get some credit here, yes?

11th bracelet!! Wooooo

Also congrats to Florida cause it is all over.

Brutal game
I thought Skinner was to far out of the net on first goal, second goal all skinner, usual suspect on third Nurse but but but
Oilers top 5 point players in regular season have no goals in this series and Leon , Zach and Nugent have none

Nurse contract and Campbell tie up 13 million future looks like Leon leaves after next year so trade him while you can

I was two tabling the game and the Ivey FT.

Yay!♥

Yeah, Maurice definitely getting some credit. Everyone said before last year how bad a hire he was for Florida, then he shut them up by taking them to the finals last year and now he’s a media darling and about to get a ring so, good for him.

yeah maurice should get his due. not sheriff him or his staff, but they made good adjustments in the rangers series:

started slow, fixed some things, turned on the nitro.
similar story here in the final with how bad they played in game 1, flipped it in g2, solid g3.

was about to say it's clear that the oilers have been out-coached, but tbf they might just be getting outgunned by the panthers' quality in depth. much stronger in the key 9f/6d/1g core

Get Pickard in there just to mix things up. Skinner is better but a change could provide a spark. They need to do something.

Yes, get Pickard in there to make sure this ends in 4 [emoji120]

Hockey might be coming to an end but hang on to your hats as it could get wild the next 2 weeks with the deadline approaching.

Already, the Canucks are telling Zadorov their last offer this weekend reports have it.

game 3, 5v5 xg: 54% oilers
score and venue adjusted xg: 50%
xg at evens: 60% panthers
all xg: 52% panthers (4.1 - 3.73)

best* oilers xg: kulak 57%, mcleod 57%, ceci 56%, brown 56%, henrique 56%
worst oilers xg: perry 8%, draisaitl 28%, ekholm 30%, nugent-hopkins 31%, hyman 33%
* - ryan was 66% over 4.5 minutes at evens, and holloway 58% over 5 minutes but got benched after being on for two goals against i guess

ouch, mcdrai actively submarining the team, another pitiful defensive effort. they were the two worst oilers in xg against at evens, by a mile (mcdavid was also worst in game 1, draisaitl was 2nd worst in game 2), and most of the damage was done in the ~5 minutes of 4v4 time in this game. over 2/3 of their xg against came in those minutes if my math is right, so if you want to know where the game was won/lost, go watch those shifts.

whatever the reasons, the oilers key players are failing in this moment. no way around that fact. also, lmao corry perry; retire, bitch. report to jail, do not pass go, etc.

best panthers xg: lorentz 93%, reinhart 83%, okposo 83%, barkov 83%, ekman-larsson 80%
worst panthers xg: montour 34%, mikkola 37%, tarasenko 40%, verhaeghe 40%, lundell 43%

stenlund broke away from lorentz and okposo for a second and one big scoring chance against was enough to knock him out of the top-3, life comes at you fast. that's all low minutes stuff though, as maurice is wisely just not playing his 4th line very much.

but overall a very solid business trip for the panthers. good energy again, 4 of their dmen had strong games again, lively transition play off of created turnovers. good team effort, no one was too horrible. protecting the lead could use some work, but you play. to win. the game. job done.

Crazy story of the day, Edmonton going the Maple Leafs way and may sign Mcdavid, Draisaitl and Bouchard to $40 million per year, $16 million, $14 million, $10 million long term deals.

Look how good that plan is going for the Leafs,lol

Sad part is the Oilers have 15 million tied up in Nurse and Campbell

No way the Oilers do not buyout Campbell right? Hearing a lot of Kings buyout Dubois rumors as well.

i don't get campbell, we all know the variance inherent in nhl goaltending

bobrovsky was so bad he was getting benched in lieu of some rando they just called up at the beginning of the playoffs last year

i can't possibly imagine not giving campbell another shot at it, surely just keeping him as their backup and hoping he can return to form is a better cap option than outright buying him out right?

issue with the oilers is cap space, there's surely some teams out there who would take nurse + campbell + 1st & 2nd round pick

oilers media seems to think campbell is getting bought out, which leads to believe that they've already called around about max salary retain (25%?) + picks/prospects scenarios, and everyone said no

nurse is signed for 9.25m until 2030, it'd take like five 1sts to dump that absolute dog or a contract. one of the very worst in the league

yeah i get it, but florida literally has 15 million tied up in knight and bob next year, something tells me they'll be fine

the length of nurse's contract is really bad, but the number itself isn't that far off

it wasn't too long ago that he was one of the most effective even strength d-men in the league - he's still well above average for all his flaws - he's not the reason they are not good as a team, his contract definitely hurts, but we all know if nurse was making 6 million a year instead of 9 they'd just have given another 3 million to corey perry

Leafs assistant coach who did the PP is gonzo as well.

he's actually pretty bad. way worse than i thought/remembered

xgf% rank among loiler dmen, by season
23-24: 5th
22-23: 6th
21-22: 2nd (ahead of lagesson, bouchard, ceci, keith, barrie, russell, broberg, niemlainen and koekkoek)
20-21: 2nd (ahead of jones, barrie, larsson, russell and lagesson)
19-20: 4th
18-19: 6th
17-18: 4th
16-17: 5th
15-16: 9th

and let me remind everyone, in many of those years edm did not have very many good players, especially dmen. and he was worse than a lot of them.

good thing he's played 9 seasons because nst only lets you group by 3 season samples, so away we go...

15-18: 8th (behind auvitu, larsson, davidson, klefbom, benning, gryba and skera)
18-21: 8th (behind bear, bouchard, barrie, klefbom, benning, manning and gravel)
21-24: 7th (behind ekholm, bouchard, broberg, desharnais, kulak and lagesson)
21-24 playoffs: 8th (behind russell, bouchard, ekholm, desharnais, barrie, kulak and keith)

he's been 1 xg point better than ceci over the last 3 seasons, so ... whatever you think of cody ceci, that's basically what darnell nurse is. he's like a $2-3m dman, his contract is wayyy off his actual value. and he's 29 years old, so there's probably a decline coming before that contract ends in 2030.

lmao nurse, almost got tossed 2 minutes into the game

Don’t call it a comeback!

43 kills out of the last 45 tries might be the wildest stat I’ve ever seen from a team in the finals

Considering the panthers might be one of the best defensive teams I’ve ever seen in my life that was ****ing pathetic

i think it's a little deceiving to put in absolute terms

there's a clear dropoff in quality after bouchard/ekholm and they are often paired together whereas he's been paired with

he also tends to see ice time when the non elite guys are on the ice, which is going to hurt his numbers significantly

it's harder to see the defense + offense line correlations because they are weaker but you can definitely see that bouch/ek have a stranglehold on icetime when the big 4 are out there

if we go back to the middle of the season, even in a game which ekholm missed, you can still see nurse gets minutes with the bottom 6 a lot more than with the top 6

if we go back to earlier where bouch/ek both healthy, we see nurse paired with yet another player and despite technically being the D1/D2 pairing that game, they still got their minutes spread without the big 4

i'm super biased because my primary understanding of hockey comes through the lens of dfs but it wasn't too long ago that he was one of the better options at D most nights, the real difference is the coach is now using him as a bandaid to shore up the weaker lines

opening night, was paired with bouch and got top6 pairings - they lose 8-1

so you could argue that nurse was sacrificed and moved back to keep the bad lines from blowing it and no longer getting ice time with mcdrai he looks like crap being surrounded by AHL talent

perhaps i'm deeply wrong, and i agree his contract is awful and will only get worse as he ages (big chance he's not even nhl level before it expires) but in the meantime i standby strongly that he is not the problem