Katobaron

Probably also has to do with the fact that Rafferty is a year older than Virtanen yet people are regarding him as a promising young prospect. Not that he can’t be an impact player, but he’s already reaching the peak performance age for many NHL players.

Part of the reason that celebrities and pro athletes make the money they do is that you live your life under the scrutiny of public opinion. It was Leipsic’s responsibility to represent both himself and the franchise according to the team’s code of conduct. You can argue legality vs morality all you want, but his contract stipulates following the code and he didn’t. If your job asks you to dress in a suit and you show up in khakis, is that social totalitarianism or a workplace violation? Also, the argument that a digital medium somehow lends itself to leniency is laughable. If he’d written all this in a letter to a pen pal and had it intercepted would it make it any different?

The way Hawks fans talk about him, they’d be asking for Hughes + a pick

Pretty sure there's bigger problems then smoking plants in Russia right now... Sounds to me like someone who has no interest in coming back but doesn't want to burn bridges just in case. If he does come back in three years he'll be a 26 year old defenseman not used to North American ice with a track record of poor commitment to both the team and his own physical fitness. At this point I'd take picks for him and call it a high risk/reward pick gone wrong. Can't win em all!

So the Canucks pass on the smaller skilled Swed (Nylander) to go with size and physicality with top 6 potential (Virtanen) and people haven't let it go ever since. Now we pick the smaller skilled Swed (Pettersson) and pass on the size and physicality (Vilardi) and people are upset? WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT.

Someone's been listening to a little too much 1040.

Burrows with the assist on Pageau's double OT winner!

http://www.hockeyfights.com/fights/137145?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Burrows had a fight today and I happened to notice on the replay that they had Stephane Auger doing guest colour. Would any French speaking peeps be able to translate what he said?

You're right, he'll get working on that Megna-Mcdavid swap right away.

Really? Last I heard he showed up to camp out of shape and was criticized for poor conditioning. He's listed at 6'2 212 lbs and the Flames 3rd pairing consists of Kulak and Engelland so whatever is keeping him from playing is probably either between the ears or off the ice.

Maybe people in Calgary projected him to be an elite top liner but as I recall the scouting report was more to the tune of "high end puck distributer with a great hockey IQ, fast wheels and a quick shot, but may struggle with the size and physicality of the NHL game". Considering the pick before him is currently being shopped around the NHL and the pick after him is making less headlines than his Olympian sister, I'd be very pleased with where Sven's development is at. He's got more of a nose for the net and scoring more dirty goals than he did in Calgary and has managed to find chemistry on our roster which can be hard to do. As of now we're playing a very defensively responsible scheme that involves a lot of winger back checking but put him in a run and gun Vigneault coached system and I'd put money on him scoring 20 this year.

Well the pick we gave up for him was our 2015 second rounder which turned into the 53rd overall pick in the 2015 draft. According to a 2014 draft article by Scott Cullen, a pick in the 50-55 range generally only has a 33% chance of playing 100 NHL games and projects on average to be somewhere between a "minor leaguer under 50 games" and a "very good minor leaguer" so if your expectation of Sven was a guaranteed top line scoring talent then I suggest you gain some traction on reality because Calgary certainly didn't think so. http://www2.tsn.ca/fantasy_news/story/?id=455673 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_NHL_Entry_Draft

Really? I thought he looks like a 24 year old slightly undersized forward with a ton of skill but being forced to develop in a rotating top six on a lottery team. This is exactly what Benning was talking about when he said he wanted to add another scorer to take the pressure off Baertschi. Developing in a top six is like learning to drive during a NASCAR race, some guys can do it but most either need time or more sheltered minutes to do so.

He doesn't? From what I've seen he's not entirely dismissive of analytics, he just doesn't believe that at the end of the day a players value to a winning team can be quantified by numbers. All things in moderation?

I don't mean to sound condescending but why does everyone think that Benning only scouts amateur players and not pros? I'm sure the overall process is very similar, he just has better footage and intel to use in his analysis. If we filled our roster with nothing but draft picks we'd have a bunch of kids who would have nothing but each other to fall back on. A lot of these draftees have never played an 82 game season, don't give post game interviews, have no previous experience in the pressures of playing at the NHL level and frankly don't have the structure and discipline to be both physically and mentally prepared to bring it every night. What's happening now is a transition from a 30 something core to a 20 something core. Just because guys like Sutter, Gudbranson, Markstrom etc aren't 18-21 doesn't mean that they're done developing and growing into pro hockey players. We're accelerating our rebuild by about 3-5 years and even though they haven't made the show yet doesn't mean that we don't have elite prospects as it is. The only way to get these guys in the 22-27 age range in a salary cap league is by giving up draft picks so unless we want a decade of Oiler hockey we're going to have to make some tough moves.

Tkachuk = ohl Virtanen = whl Boeser = NCAA

The game has evolved now to the point where it doesn't matter how much skill you have in your top 6, without a puck moving D you'll never achieve your full offensive potential. One of the things the Golden State Warriors credited their championship to was ball movement, saying that no matter how fast the players move the ball can always move faster. Part of our end to end success in our Presidents Trophy winning years was having a guy like Sami Salo on the back end moving the puck up the ice. High hockey IQ, good shot, played well positionally and knew how to turn the puck back up ice in a hurry. I'm feeling good things to come for Vancouver...

I'm excited to see Edler have a bounce back year with some more supporting pieces in place. When he has to supply the physicality, the PP shot, the puck moving, the PK defence and the leadership it's easy to see how he can be overwhelmed. It's like having a deeper batting order in a baseball lineup, the more protection you get the better the pitches you're going to see. Maybe with other players taking some of the load off he'll have some matchups that he can take advantage of.

Walk by Pantera :D