I'm getting irritated at the B's approach to the goalie position right now. Svedberg was great at Providence last year, and looked reasonably solid in his NHL debut. But now we're getting all this hype about Subban.

OK, if Johnson's barely a decent backup, and they want to get Subban more games in Providence, why not cut Johnson loose and bring up Svedberg?

Worst case scenario, they find out their two young guys may not be all they thought, so there's no harm in one of them backing up Tuukka, and the best case scenario is they both look like future stars and then one can be used as a bargaining chip.

I mean, I don't believe he's necessarily concerned about the season ticket holders, but he is upset that his best player is out.

I'm not sure how we would measure momentum vis a vis the NHL season - I'd do it by trying to take the average of tickets sold through secondary means and seeing what the average price above or below face is in an Olympic year versus a non-Olympic year.

I just can't imagine that the Olympics are a net positive for the Islanders - one of the things that never gets mentioned here is that the Olympics don't go away if the NHL stops participating.

The Isles bumped up their average ticket price to $150 this season, double that of last year's. I know I've been cautioned in the past over using average attendance figures, but for argument's sake, the Isles are drawing ~15k per home game at Nassau this season. That's $2.25M in gate revenue per game, without even touching incremental concession & merchandise revenues.

With 11 home games left, the season effectively over and their marquee superstar out of the lineup, I think there's a strong hypothetical argument to be made that the potential hit to gameday revenues will appreciably surpass the compensation Wang receives for the remainder of Tavares' prorated $5M salary (which, correct me if I'm wrong, would sit around $730k left or so?).

In any case, as hyperbolic as the argument might be...there's a valid concern being made. I agree with T that the ancillary benefits from participation in the Olympics are difficult to measure, even after the near two decade sample size we're working with. The league has obviously seen excellent growth in HRR over this time span, but correlation does not imply causation and I'm not sure how much the Olympic participation has driven this progress, at least relative to other pertinent factors.

Letang done for the year, looks like. Doesn't intend to have an operation on the hole in his heart and doctors seem relatively confident he'll play again, apparently. Still, huge blow.

More importantly though, he's alive. He said his wife found him collapsed on the floor on the day of the stroke and despite being conscious, he "couldn't function." Christ, this is scary stuff.

how likely do you think is it that they can get a high end prospect + another meaningful piece for kesler henruk?

Also substantially higher tax rate than many other teams: Top bracket state tax 8.82%, plus top bracket (over 500k) New York City rate (whether you live there, or just work there) of 3.876%. That total of about 12.7% is deductible on the federal return, but still cuts a net about 8% out of a big contract — and yes, I get that they have lots of money, but if we offered a free agent $6 million a year when his market value is $6.5 he'd be likely to laugh; this is about the same thing (relative to a no-state tax team like the Stars or the Lightning; but some good teams, e.g., the Blackhawks, are in relatively low-tax states).

Snowman is a boob shifting the blame of his and his team's lousy performance.
i mean if the #1 pick you binked is the only reason anyone will pay to watch your team, then that's kinda a you problem.

and yeah the league should probably find some ways to grow international interest and monetize it (especially in Asia), or gtfo of the Olympics. i'm sure they'll do the latter.

if they trade him, it'll almost certainly be for a quality center younger than him, and then hopefully some other stuff too, yeah

i wrote some about it last page i think

Their playoff hopes were dead before JT went down. Ok, maybe they lose some walkups because he's not there but to pretend they had a shot if he was healthy is not realistic.

Again, not surprising out of the Islanders.

Remember when the Islanders were campaigning to get Okposo on the Olympic team and then got mad when got snubbed?

Garth Snow sure doesn't*.

*actually he does he's just trying to get the IOC to pay up and deflect the whole he really blows as a GM thing

job 1 done

getting people to forget that he sucks will be considerably more difficult though

With what's going on with Martin St. Louis in Tampa, is there any confusion as to why GMs would stump for their players going to the Olympics despite the fact that the GM would rather that the Olympics not employ NHL players at all?

Who leaked the MSL rumors? There's no way the Lightning would, since it kills all their leverage in negotiations. MSL's camp probably wouldn't want to get that bad PR.

ppp is so elite

it's cute that Leaf Nation believes Fat Phil is on par with the world's very best because he lit up Slovakia & Slovenia. and i very much doubt his bagels against Canada and Finland are at all indicative of what's to come against actual good teams in NHL playoffs. no, not at all.

lol

Yeah, because he was such a detriment to Toronto's efforts vs. Boston last year.

Doesn't 90% of the hockey world finally agree that Kessel is what we think he is? One of the best pure goal scorers in the league, with little else to offer? You'd never build a franchise around him, but you'd be nuts to not want him a wing to snipe goals. I dunno, seems pretty widely accepted now. As long as you don't need to rely on him in any other way, there are few better pure scorers in hockey.

yeah that was a pretty solid series loss

how was the parade btw?

yeah but 90% of the hockey world are a bunch of idiots who sortbygoals as a method to crown people as MVPs. and almost none are putting Fat Phil in the context as you just did, it's more like:

CROSBY!!! OVECHKIN!!! KESSEL!!!
and then some other guys...

also haven't they pretty much built the franchise around him?
him and Dion anyway, that was kind of the point of the Seguin trade. not to dredge that up again or anything, but they were kinda going all-in with Phil. now they have a team build around some talented wingers, a suspect Dman, and a possibly excellent goalie.

And what the **** does that have to do with the price of eggs?

Did Kessel play well in that series, or did he not?

i honestly don't remember, but i guess i'll take your word for it that he did

so what?

that Kessel is an elite goal scorer and one of the top forwards in the NHL? I don't think this is up for debate but apparently it is

elite goal scorer? yes obv
one of the top forwards? probably not top-10

a lot of guys i'd prob take over him if i'm trying to win in the playoffs

edit: yeah just made a list of 20+ forwards i'd take over Fat Phil

$how your work

jesus when letang had a stroke last month, he was on the floor conscious but couldnt move and his wife found him

scary ****

guys i'd probably take over Fat Phil:

Crosby, Getzlaf, Tavares, Kane, Ovechkin, Perry, Malkin, Giroux, Thornton, Toews, Hossa, Kopitar, Zetterberg, Backes, H.Sedin, Carter, Bergeron, Kesler, M.Koivu, Couture, Datsyuk

might be a few more if i scoured the list

guys ~in his tier:

Parise, D.Sedin, Sharp, Kovalchuk, Backstrom, Hall, Pavelski, Duchene, Benn, Krejci, Marleau, Vanek, Landeskog, E.Staal, Neal, M.Richards, Hanzel, Steen, Spezza, Turris, Johansen, Stastny, MacKinnon, Eberle, Lucic

might be a few more guys in this tier, but i'll stop here because you probably get the point

bold is fun because way back when the Kessel to Toronto happened, it was sort of an either/or between him and Lucic for the Bruins. they were both young, up and coming wingers, the Bruins were up against the cap and basically had to ship one out, and we know how they went with it. ok so you're going into the playoffs and can only have 1, who do you pick? am i crazy because i might take Lucic?