The NHL Thread
For the 5 of us who post NHL stuff, here you go. Officially the season starts Tuesday October 11, although there were tw
Brady Tkachuk is a POS
Also lol Wes McCauley's announcements
seeing washington at the top and nyr at the bottom shows to me that there's either an insane amount of luck in this game or i was be an utterly terrible gm
rag$ were fraudulent last season; 20th in 5v5 xg%, a bad playoff team. this season they dropped to 23rd, also shesterkin has been bad, and injured. no idea if the poor performance is related to the injuries or not.
but yeah, the caps are wild. last season they were pretty bad, 25th in xg, one of the worst playoff teams ever. this season they're 9th. decent turnaround
- dylan strome: 45pts, 49%xg. not playing too well at evens, but killing it on the powerplay with 15 assists there. the caps signed him as a free agent after the hawks just didn't qualify him gjge
- aliaksei protas: 36pts, 50%xg. their 2nd leading scorer is this 6'6" belorussian who they drafted in the 3rd round a few years back. he's obviously on a heater shooting 24%, but on the other hand, he has 0 points on the powerplay.
- pierre-luc dubois: 33pts, 59%xg. he's always been solid, and now bouncing back here after a rough last 2 seasons in winnipeg and los angeles. acquired in a cap dump type trade for darcy kuemper, which has been kinda win-win so far as he's been good in net for the kings.
- tom wilson: 32pts, 56%xg. as i said yesterday, he's literally having a career best season at age 30, wild stuff. he's Actually Good, and leading the team with 8 goals on the powerplay.
- connor mcmichael: 32pts, 54%xg. their 1st round pick in 2019 has arrived, very solid possession and production numbers.
- alex ovechkin: 19g/30pts in 25gp, 46%xg. weak possession numbers, but good players tend to overcome that. and just 8 of his points have come on the powerplay. what a world
- jakob chychrun: 28pts in 36gp, 47%xg. the former top prospect is their worst dman by xg, but he's certainly producing offense. was acquired from the sens for nick jensen and a 3rd, another win-win looking trade so far.
- john carlson: 26pts, 56%xg. turns 35 tomorrow, the old guy is still gettin it done.
- taylor raddysh: 17pts, 55%xg. another guy the caps signed for free after the hawks decided against qualifying lmao, crushing it at evens with all his points coming there. sick
- rasmus sandin: 17pts, 56%xg. they paid a price to get him in erik gustafsson, but he seems to be delivering on the promise that the laffs saw in him.
- andrew mangiapane: 16pts, 54%xg. shipped out of calgary for a 2nd round pick, getting the job done so far with all but 1 point coming at evens.
- nick dowd: 15pts, 55%xg. 10 of those points are goals, and all the offense has come at evens.
- logan thompson: 2.32 gaa, .919 sv%: acquired from vegas for two 3rd rounders, thompson has been very good in goal, which is a lucky thing because their alternate charlie lindgren has not.
no clue how much is coaching and how much is their front office nerds being on fire, but they've really hit on a lot of moves. even the ones where they too a risk or shipped out a useful player. very funny that they got their leading scorer and 3rd best xg forward for free because chicago decided they were worthless, that always helps.
the main negatives on the roster are lars eller and jakub vrana looking pretty washed, and hendrix lapierre, who might suck or simply be an innocent of having to play on a line with those two, not sure. the caps team pdo is high, but not unreasonably so, though their league-leading 11% shooting luck at evens will likely regress a bit. but there's also room for improvement at the bottom of the roster, will be interesting to see what kind of swings they take at the trade deadline. i sure wouldn't bet against them hitting at this point
Nucks are in a pretty tough spot beyond the Miller/Pettersson deal. The D beyond Hughes and I guess Hronek is an abomination (these guys didn't manage a real breakout after their tying goal yesterday) and Hughes may well bolt in 2027. Are they good enough to go for it in those two seasons? They'll need two legit top 4 D (preferably including one top pairing one, though Hughes is good enough to to have a guy like Hronek fake it on the top pair). 7 million in cap space as it stands won't get you f
yup
it's a mess, and pretty unlikely that the clowns running the team can find a way out of it the way they mash the buttons
Speaking of Vancouver, guess who they are playing tomorrow! ๐๐
but first, losing to the canes tonight...
Caps are also at PDO of 102.2, which is a pretty big #. A lot of seasons, no team ends up over 102.
Bruins 2 years ago somehow ended up with 103, which is an astronomical # and pretty insane luck, and of course they went out R1 to Florida.
Habs good at bringing the conference leaders back down to Earth, and at their place no less. First VGK, now the Caps.
Habs only won Corsi in 11 of the first 28 games, but have won it in 10 of the last 12, and that's with a pretty tough schedule over that stretch, so they're definitely playing some great hockey right now.
One other thing worth noting:
70-71, a Habs rookie goaltender named Ken Dryden unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
85-86, a Habs rookie goaltender named Patrick Roy unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
24-25, a Habs rookie goaltender named Jakub Dobeš has emerged and has been unbelievable in his first 3 starts.
One time dealer?
One other thing worth noting:
70-71, a Habs rookie goaltender named Ken Dryden unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
85-86, a Habs rookie goaltender named Patrick Roy unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
24-25, a Habs rookie goaltender named Jakub Dobeลก has emerged and has been unbelievable in his first 3 starts.
One time dealer?
Did you see the 1st goal last night? wrister from well above the dots, no screen. woof.
The game might be canceled tonight as Vancouver is/was stuck in Carolina due to weather. :(.
One other thing worth noting:
70-71, a Habs rookie goaltender named Ken Dryden unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
85-86, a Habs rookie goaltender named Patrick Roy unexpectedly leads the team to a Stanley Cup
24-25, a Habs rookie goaltender named Jakub Dobeลก has emerged and has been unbelievable in his first 3 starts.
One time dealer?
Dobes is nice, but small sample size.
Suzuki, Caufield, Hutson are what will lead us to greatness.
Lots of other nice pieces as well.
can't wait to see how well they play after getting shutout less than 24h ago
and by that i mean i'll prob be watching the ravens beat the lolstealer's ass...
teeheee here we go! ๐
Well there you go 72off.
point shots confirmed unstoppable
wonder if this is some kind of scouted weakness, or just a coincidence
72off is happy tonight, lol, Leafs are putting me to sleep, what a bad game.
Ahem CowboyCold, tomorrow night! ๐
Is Laine even that useful to the Habs?
He has 8 PPG in Dec/Jan and 0 even strength goals.
Caufield had 7 PPG in Oct/Nov and then ceded his position on the PP to Laine. Caufield has 0 PPG in Dec/Jan.
So all Laine is doing is cannibalizing the goals that Caufield would be getting anyway. Laine is a bit better at it than Caufield, but not near enough to justify his price tag when he doesn't add a ton in other areas of the game.
He's still coming off a pretty big injury so time will tell, but I think he'd have to be willing to accept quite a discount to even remotely consider extending him.
He does seem to have pretty severe mental issues and has seemingly found some peace in MTL, plus don't Finns have a bit of a history of taking pay cuts in the name of happiness?
OTOH, top 6 of Caufield/Suzuki/Slaf and Laine/Dach/Demidov looks real nice if it can somehow make financial sense.
I'm on it! Stars are a very slight favorite but they are on a long 5 game road trip. They were riding a 7 game win streak until having to play a back-to-back against the Senators.
If I was forced to put a few shekels on it, i like the Leafs chances.
Big win for the Oilers going to be a race between Oilers, LA and Vegas
YAY! Till they screw it up.....
Told ya, lol
