D-Money

Boeser Garland Podkolzin …Think we’re set at RW. Don’t need to be spending that kind of money to add to that position.

Based on some recent player movement, I was thinking Florida?

Honestly, he kind of has to. We have Hoglander, Podkolzin, and Rathbone/OJ on ELCs, Horvat and Miller under market value, and likely EP & QH on smaller bridge deals. There’s not a lot coming in the pipeline now. The next 2 years might actually be their best chance to actually do some damage. Had Benning accumulated more picks and had a deeper prospect pool, maybe it could have been different. But it is what it is.

I’m gonna guess that Vancouver trades Schmidt to Montreal for a 2nd and a 3rd. Or maybe two 2nds (Habs have both #63 & #64, the last 2 picks of the 2nd round).

These are the same guys who said trading Subban for Weber was a disaster for Montreal. They’re not always right. But they were right about Gudbranson, and to a lesser extent, Myers. Hopefully Vancouver has a better read on OEL.

My thoughts exactly. $1.5-2M and I’d call it a clear win. I think OEL is better than what he’s shown. But if he continues to regress, well… That is the big gamble here.

I remember signing Soucy as Kings' GM, thinking he'd be a decent call-up guy, but probably nothing more. Man, he's produced better than I ever expected.

I’m thinking this contract won’t look so great after a few games of not getting to ride shotgun with Miro Heiskanen anymore.

Those picks were to dump Ladd’s contract, which he was stuck with when he got there. Seems like a reasonable move, and has nothing to do with losing Eberle too.

Hmm, I would trade Holtby with retention for Vanecek. Even with 50% retained, saves over $1.3M of cap, and gives us a promising young goalie who can’t step up if Demko has any injury troubles.

Predestination (currently on Netflix) Time travel movie that has 2/3 fantastic reviews on IMDB, and the other 1/3 saying it’s terrible. I’m with the latter. Once the first “twist” came, it was easy to figure out the rest, and the premise was just ridiculous. Well-acted though. 4/10

Carolina Hurricanes - Draft Review Welp, I didn't have any picks going in, and didn't have a lot of guys on my target list (wasn't even going to try to figure out who of the RL 2021 eligible guys to pick). Then @theminister started snapping up a lot of the ones we were considering adding picks for. (I knew we shouldn't have let our scout take that AGM role there!) But the opportunity came up to add 2 4th rounders for our 2022 3rd, and we had a couple of guys we were eying, so we made the move. Elliot Desnoyers, LW (selected 117th overall) Although we only added 2 guys, Elliot was VERY high on our list. Previously he was thought of as more of a defense-first guy, who probably wouldn't have much fantasy value. But then his production in Junior skyrocketed from 0.57 points-per-game in 2019-20 to 1.32 in 2020-21, and he made the QMJHL Second All-Star Team. He was signed IRL by the Flyers on May 5th. With his defensive capabilities, he has a very high floor, but now seems also to have potential middle-6 upside. I would have traded the 3rd round pick for just him, so this is already a win. Ole Bjørgvik Holm, D (selected 119th overall) Ole! Love that name... He didn't seem like much in the OHL in 2019-20. But in this past year, he played against a lot of older competition (he just turned 19 on May 23rd), and acquitted himself very well. He was the 2nd highest scoring defenseman on his men's Norwegian team (the highest scoring one is 45 years old). Then he got his first taste of professional NA hockey in the AHL, and was solid (5 points in 16 games). And lastly, he made the World Championship team for Norway - by far the youngest player on the team - and played in 6 of their 7 games. He's trending in the right direction. So...yeah...not much, but happy with the 2 I did snag. And I have been really pleased with the progression of some of the other prospects in the system. Even though Carolina is in "win now" mode, and hasn't picked in the top-40 in years, it's nice to see some help on ELCs potentially coming.

Schmidt has a 10-team no-trade list, and has expressed the desire to have a chance to win. Even if he wants to leave, I can’t see Arizona as a place he’d waive to go to. They’re an absolute tire fire right now.

…Sooooo… totally worth it?

When I took over Mike's team, he had zero unsigned prospects.

Here's a crazy scenario that hasn't been discussed: What if Canucks take Wallstedt? I mean, Demko looks great so far, but he has a history of concussion issues. DiPietro is pretty small to be considered to have starter upside. Wallstedt will probably be ready to step in once Demko's contract is up. It would admittedly be unexpected. But if Canucks feel he's truly the BPA (especially if all of the high-ranked D-men are off the board), then it wouldn't be unreasonable.

Faksa is incredibly good. He has got many Selke votes in the past, even placed 7th in Selke voting in 2018. I don’t expect Dickinson to be that good. If he was, we weren’t getting him for only a 3rd round pick. But he’s still a good player, and at a great acquisition price.

How is the free agent signing of a formerly undrafted, 28.5 year old late-bloomer with 176 career games anything like the trade for a former 1st rounder, 26 year-old with 221 games already under his belt? Dickinson is a valuable player that was only available (let alone for so cheap) because of the expansion draft. Schaller was available to the highest bidder, and we were likely the only one to offer 2 x 1.9M.

Gourde is the only exposed guy with a full NTC. Palat and Johnsson have 20-teams they can be traded to, and Killorn 16 (though I think Killorn is the 1 of those 4 they’d most like to keep).

The structure wasn’t the deficit. It was the quality of the players in the bottom-6. They were not skilled enough to produce much offence, or provide enough defensive value to use against other teams’ best players. If a much better defensive 3rd like can be used to match up against top lines, that frees up the top-6 to do more. It’s worked well for Dallas, who were in the Cup Final less than a year ago.

A good friend of mine is a huge Habs fan. He’s been talking about Montreal likely exposing Price all year. I didn’t believe Price would be attractive enough for Seattle with the year he was having, but after a Cup run it’s aligning perfectly to be a possibility. Now with Weber likely done, Carey has one less reason to stay. He’d definitely be going out of Montreal on a high note. As great as Price has been, he’s got 5 years left at $10.5M, with the cap likely flat for all of it. Montreal getting out from that is probably a good play.

Canooks?

It's not perfect, but for the price-range I like it. There are a few bourbons available in an economic 1.75L bottle here in Alberta, and it's my favorite of them. But if you're willing to shell out more bucks, I recommend Michter's.