-AJ-

Personally, I don't think there's likely a world where he would've seen the success he's had if he had stayed in Vancouver. He was showing some signs of life, but wasn't look a whole lot better than Gaudette did while he was here. Crazy how one turned out and the other didn't.

If the Canucks win 2nd overall, I'll donate $50 to Canucks for Kids. 1st overall, I'll donate $100. Hold me to this.

I'm not super excited about this kid for now, but he's still very young and developing and his playoffs were a great sign of development. Would love to see him challenged at a higher level of play than the 2nd Swedish league.

I think you might underestimate how much "everyone increases by one goal" is unrealistic. I've done predictions on player stats for several years and no matter how hopeful you are, there's always a few players with a bad year or players with injury problems that keep them from doing as well as we hoped.

Gotta be Montgomery IMO. Unbelievable season has to net him some awards. Almost no one expected Boston to be that good.

Yeah, that's pretty indefensible. A huge stain on their credibility. You would hope the NHL would change it up then.

Ah yeah, that could be a fair bit of suspicion on them. Whether or not they were supporting the cheating might be another discussion, but at the very least, it's suspicious if a lot of their hires are cheating compared to the hires of other accounting firms.

Again, auditors aren't responsible for confirming the ethical conduct of management. Don't get me wrong, if an auditor has a good reason to suspect fraud, they have a responsibility to report it, but they have no obligation to seek it out. The blame for other ethical issues would reside with internal operations or other groups that are more focused on general business conduct, such as the Better Business Bureau or, in BC, the Ministry of Labour perhaps.

A company that implodes certainly isn't the fault of the auditors. Auditors are responsible for ensuring that financial reporting is accurate within materiality. Contrary to popular belief, they're not explicitly responsible for seeking out fraud nor are they at all responsible for the financial success of a company.

Agree with this thinking. Too many people won't even give the NHL an opportunity to prove their honesty. Because they've already decided that they're dishonest, there's no way to convince them otherwise. It's perfectly reasonable to expect someone or a company to do what they can to show their honesty if they understand that others don't trust them--yet they still get criticized. To say that they should've been more transparent from the beginning is retrospective and doesn't focus on the current issue--instead using past potential offenses to permanently indict the NHL without any chance at redemption.

Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, McDavid, Matthews, and Slafkovksy say hi.

If I'm not mistaken, the lottery is actually vetted by Ernst & Young, a public accounting firm, which I didn't know about. Personally gives me more confidence in the legitimacy of the draw.

He's been on pace for over 30 goals a few times, so he definitely has it in him.

I would bet that he was at least top 10 this year and I wouldn't even be shocked if he was as high as 5th. I personally had him ranked 7th this year.

Fair. I think that was often the case back in the day, though even back in the 50s and 60s, it was often the top scoring defender that got the award. The difference was that top end all defensemen also were excellent at defense as well. I would love a Rod Langway award for the best defensive defenseman and then we could leave the Norris to the best overall. The only caveat is an award for the best defensive defenseman might make the Norris even more skewed to offensive defensemen, so we might then need a Paul Coffey award for the best offensive defenseman, but at that point you might have too many awards.

36 points in 59 games ain't bad and 39 in 42 the year before is actually impressive, but as always, it will come down to work ethic for him. At 27, he's no longer the young kid and what he is now is what you're gonna get. If he works hard, he could probably be a solid middle six forward, but given his history, that's not a certainty.

Honestly, it just feels like Petey plays harder and with more intensity than Hughes. I feel like I would get more inspired by watching him than I would Hughes. Neither guy feels much like a natural leader like Horvat was, but both could be Naslund-type leaders that lead by example. You're correct in that we don't know what goes on in the locker room and that's the most important to the leader of the team--though that said, the "C" is almost more of a media role than an actual team role anyway. The fact that Hughes seems to have been more open about leadership with the media to me implies that he may be more willing to take on those media responsibilities than Petey.

Some of those names are amazing defensively, but they actually lack on the offensive side, which I do think has become a vital part of the perfect defenseman. Guys like Fox and now Makar emulate a defenseman who can do it all. Karlsson, at least this season, does not. He was a rover this year, not a defenseman.

Makar and Fox deserve to be up there. Makar only played 60 games, but was insane with how good he was in those games, still over a point-per-game and elite defense as well. Weird as it is, Karlsson will probably win because he hit 101 points and not 99 points.

Petey feels more like captain material to me, but Hughes seems to be more interested in the role than Petey, so it may fit better with Hughes for that reason.

Agreed. I'm of the evidently somewhat unpopular opinion that so long as a player is young enough to be eligible for the Calder, age should not play a factor in voting at all. Binnington didn't win because his sample was too small.

Juulsen I could see a case for, but Keeper is a 3-6 guy in Abbotsford I think, so probably not at all close to NHL time yet. Regardless, all four guys you named would certainly be cheaper than Stech, who will probably cost around $1.5M or so.

Sounds like he probably wants to go to a winner. He'd probably be a bit favourable to Vancouver, but maybe not as much as we'd like.

There will definitely be a lot of serious looks, but I imagine that it'll be tough to actually take a roster spot. The best bet is Hoglander, who looks far too good for the AHL. Woo might get a look, as he's taken a nice step this year, but I'm still not sure it's enough to become a #6 guy and I doubt the Canucks want him as the #7--they'd probably prefer him to be a big part of Abbotsford if he can't make the team. Others like Karlsson, Bains, Nielsen, and Klimovich all show a lot of promise, but I'm not too certain they're ready for NHL hockey yet, with the possible exception of Karlsson, who was a level above the other three for most of the year and was more consistent. I also expect either Silovs or Martin to be the backup for Demko next year--my bet would be Martin. As long as he doesn't get overplayed, I think there's an angle where he can be a decent backup.

Astle is amazing at calling games IMO, but you can tell that he calls games with a TV viewer in mind, not a radio listener. I'd imagine he'd be a blast to listen to while watching, but while listening, it can be hard to know what's happening.