Gawdzukes

In addition the team got instantly better and made the playoffs after his arrival. Bo's value isn't just scoring goals. He's a top notch face-off guy and he fit right into their low scoring play style. It also takes most players time to find their place on a new team. Bo had the perfect storm with us. Absolute dogshit team and being fed in the bumper on the PP. Teams didn't even care if we scored because they knew we were giving up 6-8 goals anyway. Like I said above though we're going to have to wait and see how Bo plays this season with an Islanders training camp and being more comfortable with his teammates. Some players hit the ground running but most players don't want to come in and take over and tell the team how they should be playing. It takes time to know when you should be an individual, or when to use your teammates. They need to learn each others tendencies. He could only score 20/60 or he could get 40/80. I hope for the latter as I like Bo and have no ill will towards him. He definitely put in his time in Van ... management gave him Sweet F All besides a couple draft picks and Miller to work with for his entire 8 years. Having said I think last year was an outlier. He's more 30/25 player. Nothing wrong with that. Price is pretty high though.

Yeah that's what I was getting at. It's one thing to come in and control the whole ice against the same level peers as you're used to. It's a whole different ballgame when Gudas is stepping into at the blueline or along the boards.

He looked terrific in scrimmage at his development camp. Let's see how that looks when's he's on NHL ice.

Yeah thanks. I kind of figured it was already baked in there. I know most food items and such are cheaper in the states pretty much across the board as I've been everywhere there, except Florida. I suppose even at $13.5 mil you're only taking home half in Canada. I suppose my bigger question is how does a state like Florida operate without charging any tax at all? (Google confirmed my suspicions)

I'm no economist or anything so I'm pretty ignorant here but doesn't it matter, or shouldn't it matter how much money you have vs how much goods and services are in the area in which you live?

Is that a flock of Garlands doing spinaramas out of the corner?

In the past with Winnipeg he excelled in that situation. Let's hope he is up to the task. It is contract year. We should see his best effort.

Yeah Nashville is in a position where even if he bombs it won't hurt them too much. For us we are expecting to make the playoffs, cap strapped, and that third year is also when we owe 5 mil on OEL's cap hit. He may play well for a year or two and then fall off a cliff. It's hard to tell but his skating is extremely suspect. Not a gamble I would take. 100% on board with Soucy. 2 months ago I would have been ecstatic to know we could ink him to the deal we did. That definitely addresses our lack of size and aggressiveness on D.

I highly doubt it. That's 7 mil going their way and only 4 mil coming back. They have less than a mil in cap space.

No, unfortunately his cap hit still remains the same. His actual salary in dollars is only 1 million for the season so it's perhaps attractive to teams watching their financial bottom line. We do have the option of retaining some of the cap, but of course we ourselves have to replace him in the line-up for at least 1 million. It's possible but those types of deals are historically hard to negotiate. You don't see too many of them. There are a lot of moving pieces to the puzzle and they may just be too hard to navigate to the point we just see Myers play out his contract on the third pairing.

Didn't we all babble on endlessly about Miller for 1000+ or was that some weird dream I had?

Great post. While it's true Pesce would really complete our team on paper there is a tonne of risk, and we simply can't afford to empty our coffers at this point. Maybe if he came with a contract but he's also getting up there in age. On the flip side, maybe he's just what we need to push this thing forward a couple gears as well.

We'll see how he does without Hughes and the offensive firepower we have in comparison. He seems to be getting better with age but I'm glad we didn't sign that one.

Heck, go after an unproven old defenceman. Don't play by anyone's rules. Get er done GMPA

That's a horrible deal for Carolina. They take on $6 mil in cap, a garbage D, and a career AHLer. McDonough kind of sucked pretty bad in his 6 game stint. I don't think it gets you close at all unless no one else if offering up a first. But surely someone else would happily beat that offer. Try our first and D-Petey, or maybe our 1st, Lekkerimaki, and Beau to even out the cap.

Hopefully Abbotsford. He sucks.

Too expensive. Trade him for some picks.

Well said. Obviously he didn't earn it from the coaches point of view. This is something that is hard to see/judge through your tv set. Boeser isn't a good defender but he constantly gets put in the top 6 by all coaches. Maybe he tries harder at practice while Virtanen is laughing it up and dogging it during drills. Who knows. Sometimes it's very easy to see some guys just don't and likely will never get it. I'd imagine that's at least part of the situation with Virtanen. A bad investment. Ancient history anyway. The best teams are the ones where the top 6 take pride in winning the head to head battles equally at both ends of the ice. We can score but our top 6 has a long way to go to compete with the Vegas' of the league. Hopefully RT has them revved up and committed to start the year. A lot of defence is simple determination. Petey has it in spades.

Totally, summed it up in a nutshell with perfect imagery. I have that 5 degree angle shot with the goal line and boards in the background imprinted in my memory from seeing it so many times. Ronning was great because he saw the whole ice and moved the puck and his body before anyone could lay a hand on him. He was a great playmaker and always a couple steps ahead. Garland plays as if he thinks he's 6'3 200 lbs. Like you said it's fun watching sometimes but it's frustrating as heck in the long run.

For a small player you need to make use of time and space. Garland is always initiating contact and doing spinaramas on the boards. His teammates always seem to have a tough time reading him. I find him very ineffective overall. I think Garland would be good at logrolling. Maybe he should try that.

They have been absolutely stupid since the Canadian division. That wasn't even real hockey without any fans. We should have been laying back this whole time like other bad teams collecting assets and prospects and setting the table for the future. Instead we just wasted the last 3 years giving up all of our capital and making bad deals. We were a very poor team the last two years. We didn't deserve anything more than we got. I really hope the iteration is better this year being we're going for broke again. Any team could have made the playoffs if this that and the other, the reality is ours did not and stank it up in the process.

Pretty much the same player.

In all fairness he probably dogged it on the last 15 rushes back to the bench so he had lots of energy left when the camera was on.

$3.2 was my initial guess off the top of my head before I opened the thread.

@Gurn @DownUndaCanuck Re-signing Beauvillier would be a horrible idea. Throwing $5 mil in capspace away would be a self inflicted death blow.