The NHL Thread

skill game

LUL, linesman is standing right next to the high sticking and even looks back at the ref like "oof, did you see that?" and then they don't even call it.

Evans was even bleeding too, so it was a 4.

We got our 4 now. Lots of flying sticks

(points per 60 minutes)

boldy 3.26
kaprisov 3.09
zuccarello 2.95
---
johansson 2.54
tarasenko 2.52
eriksson ek 2.29
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hartman 2.03
yurov 1.67
trenin 1.27
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sturm 1.23
hinostroza 1.21
foligno 1.08

but ok lets do a 1 team comparison, picked the habs bc they're the closest in points among the remaining teams. caufield and suzuki are the best 2 players, zucc/demidov is a wash, slaf is way better than anyone on the wild's 2nd line. ok eriksson ek and hartman are better than montreal's 6f, but their entire 3rd line is better than minny's 8f, and entire 4th line better than their 9f. thats a shocking lack of forward depth. like 7.5 meaningful forwards, and the top guys aren't even that good.

so yeah, lol gm sloppy steaks, especially given how the easiest thing to do is pick up some random contributor at the trade deadline for a 6th round pick or future handjob or whatever
edit: ESPECIALLY when you know you have to play dallas and colorado just to get out of the division and trying to impress hughes so he re-signs. criminally incompetent ... not that i really care though

caufield 3.58
suzuki 3.55
demidov 2.93
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slafkovsky 2.88
newhook 2.47
texier 1.95
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kapanen 1.87
dach 1.78
bolduc 1.69
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gallagher 1.45
evans 1.38
anderson 1.37

mike matheson is def in this club. actually, he might be the president

Benson!!!!!!!

Come on Swords!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Buffalo not dumping in the puck every single chance they get is a massive leak since it's apparently a 16% chance of scoring

i tried to tell you that moneypuck was lol :p

idk about now, but prime tarasenko was a 2 way beast

and eriksson ek is considered one of the better defending forwards in the league

sorting by xg, the only regular minny forward they were better than this season is hinostroza. tarasenko has been kinda washed for a while now probably, and yeah eriksson ek has a good rep, but... ¯\_(ツ😉_/¯

"good defensive forward" rep is often meaningless. like bo horvat has that for example, but i don't think he's ever been good defensively. for example, many such cases

edit: ok yeah jee was good until this season. no clue what happened, but he was poor. probably injured and/or tarasenko was dragging him down or just getting old, who knows

5v5 xg (rank among wild forwards)
19-20: 54.54% (6th)
20-21: 58.05% (1st)
21-22: 57.61% (3rd)
22-23: 53.68% (2nd)
23-24: 55.42% (3rd)
24-25: 55.40% (3rd)
25-26: 50.81% (10th)

Tough loss. Thought we were gonna roll these guys for sure. UPL played well. We gotta bury chances. Could've been up a lot with better shooting % or worse goaling.

Why did you think you were going to roll the team with the better regular season record/stats?

Because we are better than them and have been better than them all 4 games this series.

because montreal has LE PASSION

I'll disagree. Montreal is all smoke and mirrors.

he's horrible, looks good at times because of his skating ability, but then coughs up the puck when under no pressure about 5-10 times a games. A lot of his outlet passes put his teamates in bad spots.

Benching Kapanen to play Veleno should be a fireable offense as well

It's LA, bro, not LE in this instance.

obviously my french education ended in like grade 8... lol

To be fair, I only knew what gender it was by looking it up on wordreference and surprised to see it actually spelled the same as the English word and no accents.

Habs won 2 games by 4 goals each and in the 2 they lost they outshot Buffalo by 12 and 8. Anything can happen in a 3-game series without home ice advantage, but I'm definitely a helluva lot more confident being 2-2 here than 2-2 vs. TB. I think TB was a top 3 team in the league so that's a great confidence builder for the youngest team in the league.

I think either of these teams probably lose to Carolina in 5, especially b/c they'll be well rested and whoever survives here will have fought hard.

playoffs after dark: pivotal game 5 overtime edition

The Toronto Maple Leafs have fired Craig Berube.

You had to suspect that . Love how the Oilers asked permission to speak to Cassidy and were denied. Imagine being Knoblauch hearing that . Show some class Oilers and fire the man if your searching for a new coach

I never realized that Cassidy had one year left on his contract at 4.5 million. So that money is guaranteed. Though if the Oiler's hire him for 4 years 18 million 4.5 mill a year Vegas is no longer on the hook for that money . I always thought he gets the 4.5 mill from Vegas and than his new contract

Wait why do they need permission? Wasn't he fired?

Even though fired technically Vegas is paying him . I guess it's a league requirement