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Maniwaki Canuck

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Everything posted by Maniwaki Canuck

  1. I think that failure to clear the corresponding cap space is the fairest criticism of this move and of others this management has made like signing Mikhayev in the summer. If you don't clear that space first and you're over a barrel, it undercuts your already weak bargaining power in moving some of the players we need to move. But I'm sure they've tried and know what poison pills they're going to have to swallow in the summer. I'm still glad to see them making credible moves to improve the team during this window.
  2. You're absolutely right about the cost control issues. We'll have one year of this guy as a relative bargain and after that we'll have to pay market value. But that's better than not having a top RD at all. To go from where we are to being a contender during the Petey-Hughes window is going to take a lot of sharp moves from management, no question. But that is a common trait of nearly every cup winner in the salary cap era, very few of which started from scorched earth rebuilds. You need good management to win in this league.
  3. About the timing of this deal: It's not a "win now" move or about being "buyers" at the deadline. The guy is 25 and likely has 8 good years ahead of him. It was an opportunistic acquisition of a player we really need for the future. Yes, it would have been better to have drafted our own equivalent 4-5 years ago, but we didn't.
  4. Big thanks to Schenn for waking the team up early and getting Toronto in over their heads. He can come back next year.
  5. Little baby Bunting thought better of throwing when he saw it was Joshua.
  6. The best defense can be good offense. But Quinn is just fine defensively even if he's not a crease-clearing cave man: great stick and positional play. Whether you go by +/- or fancier stats like expected goals, the numbers all say the same thing: this guy tilts the ice massively in our favour. No matter who you put him with, they are our best pairing and all the pairings he's not on are a disaster. Hopefully Hronek changes that last part, and one day we get Quinn a partner he doesn't have to carry, but what he's doing here is absolutely phenomenal.
  7. What a test of loyalty to team tank. Through gritted teeth, I was thanking the refs for their brutally biased calls and non-calls in the 3rd there, but those shorties were pure joy. It's never wrong to beat the Leafs, and the more they invade our building, the sweeter it is.
  8. Yes, and that reality is that it is going to take several (maybe 7-8) good moves to get us from where we are to where we want to be. Getting there next year isn't realistic, but neither is tearing it down: getting better one strategically sound move at a time is the path. By strategically sound, I mean the difference between getting Hronek vs. OEL, a younger guy on the upswing vs. an older, injury hampered guy on the downswing. Plugging the first couple of holes in our roster may not initially make that much difference, but it will lay the groundwork for subsequent ones to have more impact. Management has to start somewhere. We'd all like it to have begun 10 years ago, or for Linden to have won out over Benning, but it didn't go down like that, so here we are.
  9. Actually I can see both sides about what management is doing, especially over Miller, so it's not that. All I'm commenting on here is how many people say they despise Drance while saying the same things he does. It's not my problem to resolve, though.
  10. Totally. And he's on record advocating the accumulation of draft picks as currency to get the players we need, then reverses course when management does exactly that. Freaks out about missing the window with Petey and Hughes, then loses his sh!t when we try to plug some holes around them. All at full volume and with utter disregard for how he contradicts himself. But it works: look at all the negative nellies here, it's like he has a direct line to their brains.
  11. That's right: lots of people acting as though we were somehow "buyers" at the deadline when really it was more the kind of move that normally happens near the draft or free agency. The only timing issue here was about the trade deadline being the optimal moment to dump cap. I'm sure they tried but there isn't much demand for the players we're trying to move. Big surprise.
  12. If we can believe Allvin about "no offer on Miller" (and I do) then that blows the bs from Dreger out of the water. It seems like they would move him for the right offer, but haven't gotten it, which is where we've been for the last year. For better or worse, I think he's going to be around for a while, maybe the duration. Personally, I still like the player but understand why others don't. The case for keeping him really took a hit this year.
  13. To those who were certain sellers would have leverage at the deadline's closing hours: don't all speak at once.
  14. Last time we had a shot at the cup we made the playoffs for the two previous years and gained the experience needed to go further. It's a threshold every contender has to pass through. If we did tear it all down and every pick miraculously worked out, we'd be looking for veterans to guide the team through that stage once it got good. Getting better and making the playoffs aren't opposed to winning the cup but part of the process. It's all in how you do it.
  15. Only if they took OEL as the cap dump, which they don't have the space for.
  16. For sure it has ownership approval and it's a smart business (as well as hockey) decision. If retooling around Pettersson and Hughes doesn't work, they will bring back major assets in a trade, but not to even try to build a team around them would be a crime. We are about 4-5 years past the time when tearing it all down made sense.
  17. Just remember kids, we're so bad that any move we make won't be good enough to fix everything, so we shouldn't do anything. You hear it from resident genius Dan Riccio last night.
  18. Good game from Kravtzov last night, and not just the assist to Boesser. Several smart plays and a bit of grit too. Maybe he's a "wall guy" after all! Lots of chemistry with Podkolzin and Dries: that was a good line for us last night.
  19. I haven't watched Hronek enough to know whether he's the first pairing D with a complete game as the optimists assert or the middle pairing D who can't really defend that the pessimists maintain. It will all depend on how he fits in here in any case. Who his partner is, whether Tocchet can get our forwards to support the D better, are really going to matter. But I trust that our pro scouting on this guy has been solid enough to warrant taking the chance. He certainly has the mobility and the shot. If we're going to put a team together around Pettersson and Hughes in their primes, moves like this are unavoidable, whether or not they actually work. Our D has been absolutely horrendous and fixing it is going to cost. The good new is that getting defense-first partners for Hughes and Hronek will be cheaper. I can see D-Petey paired with Hronek in a couple of years. Big picture is that lots of teams are retooling on the fly like us, making one big move like we did with Horvat to get assets, and then converting them into what they need now. That trade was a home run for us and I'll take Horvat and a second for Beauvillier, Raty and Hronek every day of the week.
  20. A couple of good touches from Kravtzov tonight, but otherwise unnoticeable. Gotta cut him some slack since he's played only one game this month but I hope some of Podkolzin's and Kuzmenko's motor rubs off on him.
  21. My reaction also. But if he brings it on the ice, I can overlook it.
  22. Any of Brisebois, Wollanin or Juulsen >>> Stillman. Sucks for Abby to have them up with the big team, but great for those players. Also great to see D who can play a simple game but still transition the puck out of our own end. What a concept.
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