c00kies

Craig looks like Gerry Dee and Murr from Impractical Jokers smooshed together.

I'd love me some Hanifin; would be the perfect partner for Hronek. Hanifin is a big LD who can do it all and isn't on a long-term deal. I haven't been the biggest fan of Weegar, as he struggled in last year's playoffs with Florida and I think he's a bit over-rated, but he is a RD which makes him so attractive. Either way, I doubt Calgary trades a d-man to us.

I'd love to add a snarly guy like Bieksa. I remember Bieksa struggled with consistency on defense early on, but then built up to be a good partner for a stay-at-home Hamhuis.

I know it took Kesler a long time to get the offense going, but he truly mastered the defensive side alongside Burrows, and then he worked on his offense which coincided with his bump up to 2nd line centre (and Burrows then to the first line with the Sedins). It depends what you need and how patient you can be with players. If you don't need instant scoring forwards, you can build them defensively and then have them work on offense once you move them up the line-up. Horvat seems to be confused on what he is; as he was a faceoff specialist who was supposed to be good defensively, but then transitioned to full goal-scorer without fully developing the defensive side, and then he was forced back to being a two-way guy, but his offense never fully developed either (AKA he "cheated" to get points and goals).

He also only played like half the season

Cooper kept his job after being swept by Columbus and that patience helped lead to 3 cup runs and 2 wins. Winning a Cup should also give you some time, especially since the Avs had key injuries that would have flipped the series in their favour. When they eventually get fired, they will be hot commodities around the league.

This is interesting to see. Kesler got praised for shutting down Toews in 2011, but Kesler also didn't put up many points (if I recall, no goals either). The problem with the Isles is they didn't have enough offense to go around to cope for Horvat neutralizing the opposition. They needed to put somebody else in that role and let Horvat make stuff happen offensively. I didn't pay attention to the Isles and Canes series, so I'm not sure if Horvat was given shutdown duties against a certain line or not, but it would be interesting to see if the Canes tried to get away from Horvat if that was the case.

Twitter is only useful for sports and porn, but other medias can cover this. Twitter is so depersonalized that it isn't even used for friends.

We also have or had one in Manitoba

It would go away since he signed the contract when he was younger than 35 (or 35 year old season). However, I don't see this happening, and hope a healthy OEL can rebound to some degree next year.

You are correct! I wrote my piece at lunch and flubbed what I was trying to say lol

I'm curious what teams will offer him as well. He's big, skates well, and is right-side so there are going to be interesting offers. Maybe we see him offered a multi-year deal (3X3), a spicy one-year deal (1X4) or a one-year show me (1X1.5).

This explains why Safeway and Sobeys have switched to Scene.

I like this timeline when it comes to OEL being moved. We definitely need a couple d-men to round out the top-4 (Hronek and Hughes are in the top two pairings, but we need others to fill out the top pairings). I think we have forwards who can come up and fill spots in that group, but not on our defense. I think the next couple years will tell us what we have as we try to bring young guys up to the NHL.

I agree, and I hope they will switch to a pre-season strategy near the end of March (I'd prefer earlier, but I don't see it happening). We have tough competitors who won't want to rest, so seeing PP2 out more than PP1 will likely be done closer to the end of the season.

When does Miller's NMC come into effect? July 1st?

Sounds like they wanted a young center from Pittsburgh for Miller instead of picks. Wish we got picks so we could get a young center...

Correct, he is rather slow and doesn't look like someone for your top 4. I think of him as a 6th-7th d-man

I would rather have traded the extra pick for him than get Hronek.

What i don't like about this is that it made going after the Islanders 1st a waste of time. If there was a better package with a worse 1st, it would have made sense to do that over the Islander deal since the 1st is being traded anyway.

This is the best dman out there, so good job Edmonton.

Solid trade. This is what I would have expected the price to be for a depth forward.