16/31 teams make the playoffs
and a 1st year expansion team won their division ffs
but 5/7 Canadian teams find themselves here today, once again
hello darkness my old friend...




(seems like Florida can still pass St.LouisPhilly for 13th with a final game loss today, but you get the point)


news so far:
- NY Rangers fire head coach Alain Vigneault
- Red Wings re-sign GM Ken Holland to a 2-year extension

is that bad?


anyway, welcome, other fans of losers!

apparently the soon-to-be 35yo Ilya Kovalchuk is looking to return to the NHL, and play for another 2-3 years (at least?)

curious to see who'd be interested in that

in the game of 2018 NHL Lottery, you win, or you draft some dman

given that they basically draw for the top-3 positions and everyone else moves down accordingly, and this draft appears to have a clear top-3 prospects, with a grand prize of a franchise caliber offensive dman, it's an interesting year for this lottery thing
(the other 2 prizes are scoring wingers btw)

after those 3 many of the other lottery picks will likely be other offensive dman
lots of bad teams will probably be drafting their future PPQBs this summer

some stuff i wrote on this draft previously


fwiw my tiered lottery rooting interest rankings:

last. Chicago - **** them, they don't deserve ****
13. Edmonton - see above
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12. Ottawa - **** Mean Gene
11. Florida - Lol Tallon
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10. Detroit - don't really want to see them get a bailout here
9. Buffalo - nothing against them, but just boring & bad, don't want to see a good player wasted there
8. Arizona - see above
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7. NY Rangers - won't even be mad if they won, but meh to big markets getting lucky
6. Philly - see above
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5. Dallas - adding another star there? sure, why not
4. Carolina - this new weirdo owner aside, they could use a star
3. Montreal - Lol Bergy, but that market getting a star appeals to me for some reason
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2. NY Islanders - need it after Tavares leaves, and it would be hilarious if they won with Calgary's pick
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1. Vancouver - seriously considered putting them lower because i don't want to see that moran get bailed out

It's weird that everyone seems to be perpetuating the narrative that Tom Dundon is some sort of "weirdo" just because he's challenging the conventional wisdom of how a pro hockey organization should be managed. Aren't we all in agreement that like 75% of NHL GM's are absolute morons? It's gonna be tough for him to implement a philosophy that will put Carolina into a worse position than they've been in for the last decade. It feels like all the resentment toward him is coming from legacy hockey people and being transmitted via old school media guys.

On one hand Carolina has been building and their years of being competitive should be coming now. Their cap hit is 59M this year. So if they would use the cap space and their young D improve (also get some saves) they should be doing pretty well. So maybe they havent been too bad managed lately. Well maybe they could have gotten Taylor Hall for Justin -30 Faulk. I think Francis did not need to be fired, but sure if the owner felt it would not work with Ron then so be it.

There was a Dundon interview on the Athletic, I did not think he came off as a weirdo wanting to play with a new toy he got. Did say he was gonna learn as much as possible about everything that goes around a hockey club, so that he would understand what needs to be done and what kind of people to hire. But that he would let other people make the calls once they were hired. Maybe he still would make some snap decisions by himself on some things especially if things go bad, I dunno. Even Filippovic was like "why does he do things in business one way and then come to hockey and want to do them the other way??". I thought he said he wanted to do exactly the same, get to know everything as good as he can, but have other people in place to make pretty much every call.

Will Carolina let Ward walk and hire a FA like Grubauer or Hutton? Or could Rangers be upping the tank and trade Lundqvist and Zuccharello for Darling and a D + prospects/picks? Okay maybe not.

He'll have no trouble finding suitors, guy can still score. Habs will take a swing at him I'm sure but probably not willing to overpay him to the extent that will be required to land him.

Would be happy to be in this thread again as a Habs fan if I thought it took us a step closer to getting rid of Bergevin but management has already repeatedly insisted he isn't going anywhere so there is absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel for us. Not only are the habs a lousy team but Bergevin has put the team in a position where it can't possibly improve because the best assets are untradeable.

Just going to sit back and watch the death spiral I guess. I don't even want us to bink the #1, it would just be a waste that would probably band aid Bergevin's gaping wounds and prolong the agony. Just put us out of our misery and move on.

Not sure where else to post this, but the coroner misidentified one of the deceased in the Humboldt crash. Imagine being a parent who thought your child died only to find out that he is alive.

Rumors around NHL is that Kovalchuk is already agreed to sign with the Rangers.

Among the non-Dahlin draft prospects, I've seen Svechnikov play live quite a bit. I am not that impressed. I will hawt taek that whoever drafts him is getting a bust.

Surprised this wasnt covered in here at all also or I missed it

Also being the truck driver. Chances are he will be charged as it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that he blew a stop sign

This would be a spectacular feeling. The feeling when your child was identified as alive, but turns out to have passed away would be the impossible one.

i mean, it's not because he IS challenging conventional wisdom, obv more about how he's going about doing that

like he's basically come out and said that he wants to hire some puppet GM for like $300k/year and actually run the team himself ala Jerry Jones / Mark Cuban

like do we know if he even knows anything about hockey?


guess it could work out if the plan is basically turning the team over to the nerds, but hiring some non-nerd as supervisor to network with the old school dinodonks


not holding my breath...

He did? I know some have said it like that, and maybe I got the wrong impression from the athletic piece but did not necessarily hear that. No idea how those JJ MC dudes do it. Yea prolly not good idea if he will start smashing buttons at will.

yeah, believe Friedman had that note in his 31 Thoughts shortly after Francis was fired

maybe he's changed his tune since then, idk

(thinking not though, as no one serious seems to want the job, or even an interview)

Hah yep that isn´t a great look that no one is interested.

I think it was mostly the media that seems butthurt over Francis being fired that have perpetuated the notion that Canes new owner wants to have a puppet GM.

From what I've read he wants the GM to be a GM that actually lets the scouts/analytics guys do their jobs and then use that info to make decisions without the GM being a glorified scout himself. Sounds kind of like a GM by committee with less control for the GM so that could be why some guys haven't taken the job.

I also applaud the owner trying to low-ball the GM salary because I think many NHL GMs are awful. He probably bought the team and then saw Ron Francis do nothing(seriously I think the only thing he did was sign Darling to that terrible contract) and wondered why exactly he was paying him a **** load of money.

Then again I could be totally wrong and he really wants to be GM himself. Either way tho he's rustling jimmies among the ol' boys club.

I'm mostly only a casual hawks fan these days but what the hell am I doing in here already? Other than the absolutely stupid even at the time Panarian for Saad move, what the hell happened?

I guess everyone fell off a cliff and ofc they have 4+ years still left on their deals b/c lol idiots sign them till late 30's.

imagine a world where the Avs traded Duchene to BuffaLOL instead of ROR

Tbh I think it's the price you have to pay for the success and I wouldn't count them out next year. Ofc that Seabrook contracts hurts, but other than that if Saad regresses back to normal and Crawford stays healthy they will probably be contending for a playoff spot.

LET'S GO RANGERS!

Wait what.

Yeah, I listened to the 31 Thoughts pod about the Dundon situation and that wasn't what I got out of it at all. Basically, it sounds like Dundon--with consultation from his analytics guys, scouts, coaches--wants to come up with a comprehensive strategy for roster construction, game situations etc. and have his GM execute that strategy faithfully. Assuming they can get a bunch of smart people together to develop that strategy, it seems markedly better than just anointing a GM to click buttons cause he once played in the league.

I thought the exact same thing.

So much of this seems to be: "Legacy" hockey people feel threatened by a new guy willing to challenge the status quo --> Said legacy hockey people reach out to their friends in the media to vent their frustration + hopes that he fails --> Media people are thrilled to get calls from a bunch of angry Hall of Famers and they broadcast that message to the public.

I mean, I get that Ron Francis was working with a limited budget but he didn't exactly do anything great with what he was working with. Zero player-for-player trades, missed on a few first round picks, Darling contract, never made the playoffs. Tell me you couldn't replace him with some random scout and get the exact same result. Couple that with the fact he was apparently getting paid $2M a year and it's no wonder why the owner felt like he could get better value with someone else.

Half of these NHL GM's are just button-clicking, retread idiots. I hope Dundon hires some unknown nerd for 300k a year and they have a ton of success.

Have followed the Dundon thing pretty closely, and I'm skeptical. Saying he wants to follow the Eagles model and have a decision matrix that the team should follow seems kind of weird - you never have a spot in hockey where its 4th and 2 from the 30 yard line and you decide your action based on a probability chart.

His process may make more sense for roster construction - ie, before we draft or sign a player, we first review the following list of criteria. If a player falls outside the acceptable range for that criteria, thats a blocker on acquiring him barring some significant alternative factor.

It can also make some sense in terms of dealing with the coaching staff in general - eg, let's say they track penalty kill situations, and they model that if you have a 10 game stretch where you are giving up X PPG against, Y expected PPG against, or whatever else, its required that the coaching staff make a material change to either the personnel or the structure, and that they be able to articulate the change made.

Stuff like this is what I hope he wants to do and represents a massive improvement over "the boys just need to bear down harder on the PK" or "we should sign this guy because he's good in the room and brings winning culture". The flip side, and why it's facing so much resistance, is that it brings very harsh accountability for performance, and requires a lot of work to justify your decision making process. No more scout watching a game and "seeing him good" or coach pressers of "our results haven't been great and we need more effort".

Can someone link that Dundon podcast? Sounds interesting.

And I agree that those analytics make more sense for the roster management aspect, but it can have a positive impact for on-ice play if the coaches study the numbers before the game. For example, I think it's widely accepted that coaches don't pull their goalies early enough when behind. Going from pulling your goalie with 1 minute left to pulling with 3 minutes left would be +EV, even if the numbers say you should be pulling with 4 minutes left.

ya
pulling the goalie i guess

could probably find some other things with some research

having a system is good
having some rigid system seems bad
why even employ ppl then? just legit design a model to make decisions for you

don't really see how this is breaking new ground

the coaches review this stuff daily and try to fix mistakes

some/most teams the coaches and GMs probably meet or talk daily to review things

special teams probably one of the most over-analyzed parts of the game now

ya fighting WIMtangibles is probably the #1 area for improvement in the league, though everyone does seem to be getting smarter about it, and the worst are just making minor mistakes now, for the most part

and make minor mistakes over, and over, and over...


kinda sounds like he wants to Hinkie this thing (broad Hinkie strategy, not the never-ending tankathon part), finding gaps and areas to improve

but first he should probably get in and gather information so he knows what's broken first, rather than presuming to know and implementing weird systems that might not help

Not directed at this poster, who I don't know...

I find it fascinating that so many sports fans advocate for harsh player evaluations when most employees are TERRIFIED at the prospect of modest accountability. The average 2p2er might be an exception but I'm sure some of the armchair GMs on here shirk responsibility like madmen in their personal lives.

fwiw he's talking about management/coaches, who face about zero accountability

(save for when the owner sours on them)