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Baggins

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Everything posted by Baggins

  1. How exactly was he mismanaged? I think that's a myth.
  2. Of course the odds are if that happens in your office it isn't on camera and then broadcast across North America.
  3. isn't a bandwagon fan by definition a person that's a fan when things are good, and then not a fan when things are bad? It sure sound like you're a bandwagon fan.
  4. Since '86 Montreal fans have rioted FOUR times (86, 93, 08 & 11) after WINNING series. Their first riot was in '55 when Richard was suspended for the season.
  5. I've been watching since the 60's. So what? It doesn't change the fact that the Canucks didn't have to put out their fourth line and they didn't have to agree to fight. They keep their gloves on and the refs have no choice but to call penalties on the Flames who do. That's what's obvious to me.
  6. If they drop the gloves and come after our players, who don't drop the gloves, what options do the refs have? Get over your paranoia.
  7. Now that's just a stupid comment. Their goons would be out of the game.
  8. Where in my post did I say put the 1st line out? Put anybody out there and let the Flames take the penalties.
  9. On the other hand the our players could have refused to drop their gloves and let those Flames each take 5 for fighting, 2 for instigating, and a game misconduct just like what happened to us in Anaheim. Then we would have played most of the 1st on the pp and the Flames would be short on bodies the entire game. There is a choice.
  10. Of course you were scoffed. Last summer, with the cap going down, 40-50 point players were getting $4m and more. Tampa gave Filppula a $5m cap hit 4 year deal with a whopping career high of 40 points. Wait till you see what ufa's are getting this summer with a healthy cap increase.
  11. Gets off his $$?? We spend to the cap, increased scouting, added specialists for the players, and bought out a player. What more is there to spend $$ on?
  12. Gillis had to buy out Ballard and trade a goalie just to get under the new cap. Anybody thinking there would be significant improvements this past offseason, or through this season, has their head up their arse.
  13. That's something I've brought up repeatedly. But even ignoring Giliis saying he won't ask players to waive their ntc, nobody has been able to name a player who waived his ntc in the first year of his deal at the teams request. This is why I see it as just plain stupid to think Edler is going to. Some like to think an ntc doesn't mean much and they are waived "all the time" but most that are waived are pending ufa's at the deadline or the player himself asking to be moved because he's no longer happy. It would be negotiating suicide to re-sign a player to a lengthy deal with an ntc and then turn around and ask them to waive the ntc in the first year. Others would likely be more inclined to test free agency, select the team they want, and get a full value contract to boot.
  14. I can't think of any that were asked to waive their ntc in the first year of their deal and I go back a long, long way. To be honest how many are asked, decline, and we never hear about it. Not all are as public as Sundin and Kaberle. But those were rather public because the Leafs were out of the playoff race and the deadline was fast approaching. But neither of them were in the first year of their deals either. How many trade talks go on that don't result in a trade that we never hear about? GM's don't often make public such talks unless a player has demanded a trade.
  15. So you have come up with a list of nobody waiving their ntc in the first year of a deal. Good work.
  16. Kaberle and Sundin both refused to waive their ntc. Name one player that has waived his ntc at the teams request in the first year of his deal. I've named two that refused, you just name one that waived in the first year.
  17. My God, your whining about O'Brien? With the addition of Ballard and then signing Hamhuis there was no roster spot for him. Up to the cap limit O'Briens salary, which was well north of $1m, was too much to sit in the press box. With better options in Rome and Alberts, O'Brien was moved. Shirokov signed a contract with the KHL before we traded him. He was gone. Which is why we didn't get much for him. The reality is we were trading his NHL rights which holds little value. Something was better than the nothing Shirokov that then represented. MG has made some good moves during his tenure. Some have worked well, while others (although making sense) haven't and he tried some that were just plain gambles. The problem is some here seem to expect perfection in every deal. Sadly it doesn't work that way for any GM. Welcome to real life. Sturm was one of those moneyball signings. What that means is you're taking a risk. Had Sturm returned to previous form he would have been a half price player. Unfortunately he didn't. He was moved along with an aging Samuelsson (who had become rather injury prone) for a player who had a great deal of potential. Booth came in and played very well. The deal initially looked like genius until a steady string of injuries derailed Booth. Unfortunately injuries are rather difficult to predict and none of his injuries here were related in the least to previous injuries. When you spend to the cap you have to look for bargains if you don't have a solid prospect pool. Bargain hunting doesn't always pay off and as far as prospects go the pool here was mighty shallow here when MG took over.
  18. Likely because he's the most valuable piece on the roster without an ntc.
  19. An interesting article on Kassian regarding his role and under lying numbers.... http://canucks.nhl.c...s.htm?id=699708 Two weeks ago, in a game against the Winnipeg Jets, Zack Kassian picked up the puck in the offensive zone and took a sharp angled shot on Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec. He was stopped but was able to recover the puck in traffic and threw the puck back to the high slot, right onto the stick of Chris Tanev, It was one of those plays that vindicated the opinions of at least two people. Myself, and Dimitri Filipovic of the blog Canucks Army, both agree that while Kassian is an interesting player, he's probably better suited to a role where he's expected to play more on the perimeter and focus on puck-possession and passing than he should be a grinder and muckracker in the crease. "Perimeter player" shouldn't be a dirty word in the hockey world. Lots of the great players play away from the crease. A majority of goals are started off plays from the outside, and the puck bouncing onto the blade of the right stick. Just because Kassian is big shouldn't mean he's instantly qualified for a role in front. The other thing to note with Kassian is that he's very skilled and has an odd stickhandling prowess for a player that looks as much of a tough anachronism to the 1970s as he does. There are a lot of people that want to see Kassian become Milan Lucic, but Lucic has a career shooting percentage of 14.9% over 447 games. He's not only good in the dirty areas, but has a pretty good shot in all areas of the slot. Kassian, meanwhile, has a 13.2% shooting percentage, which is high for a forward, but elevated thanks to an unsustainable 19.5% shooting rate this season. Lucic also shoots about twice as often as Kassian. But just because Kassian isn't Lucic in one area doesn't mean he can't be similar in other areas. One of the strange things you'll discover about Lucic is that despite being a player who was late joining competitive hockey and has a limited skillset, his Boston Bruins teammates mostly have better Corsi numbers with Lucic than without. Corsi, for the uninitiated, is a simple statistic used to approximate how much time one team spends with the puck when a player is on the ice, by using attempted shots. These have shown to correlate very well with zone time, back during a day the National Hockey League tracked the statistic with a stop watch. Anyway, between 2011 and 2013 per a tool found at the excellent HockeyAnalysis.com, Milan Lucic's teammates had better Corsi percentages with him than without him. David Krejci (56.4% with, 47.4% without) and Nathan Horton (58.4% with, 53.1% without) and Tyler Seguin (60.3% with, 59.3% without) are good examples. Kassian has shown a similar proficiency to increase the Corsi percentages of the teammates he's on the ice with. Through Sunday, Brad Richardson had a 46.2% Corsi with Kassian and 39.9% without, David Booth was a 51.7% with and 47.2% without, and Tom Sestito was a 47.2% with and 37.3% without. Mike Santorelli, another good example, was 54.1% with and 50.9% without. It's difficult to form any major conclusions on this data because John Tortorella sends his lines out with different roles, but Kassian doesn't get a lot of favours from the coaching staff in terms of deployment. He starts just 26.3% of his shifts in the offensive zone, which is 13th out of 15 Canuck regulars, and 40.4% of his shifts in the defensive zone, which is 2nd behind just Richardson. Per ExtraSkater.com's Quality of Teammates ranking, Kassian is 7th among 10 qualified Canuck forwards. Which really leads us to the question… how would the better players on the Canucks do if they were to play with Kassian, rather than Zack being relegated to defensive lines with minimal offensive responsibilities? One year ago, he had some early success with the Sedin twins, mostly thanks to some good early shooting percentages. However Henrik Sedin had a 60.0% Corsi percentage with Kassian, and even though Henrik was 61.2% when he wasn't paired with Kassian, 60.0% is still a very high percentage and is the benchmark for some of the best tandems in the game, like Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang (62.7%), Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams (63.6%), Patrice Bergeron and anybody, or Henrik and Daniel Sedin (62.6%). It's no secret that Kassian is a very interesting player to look at, but it's tough to tell exactly what he succeeds at. Among qualified Canucks forwards, Kassian is 7th out of 10 players with 5.3 shots on goal per 60 minutes, and ahead of only Sestito in passes per 60 minutes, with 3.9. ("Passes" is a statistic created by Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus, using on-ice shots and assists statistics to estimate how many times a player set up a shot. Henrik Sedin leads the Canucks with 11.3 per 60. If converted to shots on goal, that would put him among the league leaders.) Canucks leaders in passes Passes Henrik Sedin 132 Mike Santorelli 109 Daniel Sedin 92 Chris Higgins 91 Kevin Bieksa 67 The fact that Kassian is ranked so low in passes is surprising to me, because my eyeballs tell me that he is very adept with the puck in the neutral zone and along the wall in the offensive zone. I think he's a better player when he opts for finesse rather than raw power. His goal against Pittsburgh Tuesday night was a mix of both. While he cut hard to the net and benefit from a good bounce, he also began the rush forward in the defensive zone and despite the Canucks being on a 3-on-3 rush in a very small amount of ice, Kassian opted to dish the puck to Chris Higgins for a controlled zone entry rather than dump the puck in, and exploited the small amount of space Rob Scuderi had to move to prevent a move to the net from Higgins. It's just those little things that are buried beneath the surface. Kassian is described as "a project" or "toolsy", but he helps the Canucks depth players achieve better results when with him and his recent uptick in ice-time could lead him to playing more offensive minutes. It's odd to see how few assists (3) or how he ranks in the passing estimator based on the things he can accomplish when he has the puck along the wall, but perhaps he just needs to be put with shooters. After all, Kassian's teammates score on just 5.5% of their shots when he's on the ice (if you remove Kassian's shots) which is unsustainably low. His assists total is probably not indicative of the way he's played. That play against Winnipeg was his lone primary assist on the season, but if he keeps playing the way he has, I don't think it will be his only one.
  20. That last goal by Crosby was 100% Hamhuis. Who leaves the best player in the world all alone back door to race across the net to try and block a perimiter shot the goalie is already set for? Apparently Hamhuis does. Really bad play on his part. Had that been Edler there'd be a multitude of threads about the bonehead play, "Edler cost us the game", "Edler needs to go" and so on. But that's the difference between being under the microscope and being popular here.
  21. He signed for $8.6m with it prorated to a $5.363m cap hit. So yes, he did sign for less than offered.
  22. 1. Although I was shocked at the offer it would have been gold if Sundin had accepted right away. He was over a point a season his previous season ad we had the cap space so the number didn't matter. The problem was he took the summer off and really didn't start working out until November. Voice of experience, as you get older you get out of shape faster and it takes longer to get back into shape. Had Sundin signed right away and worked his regular off-season routine for the beginning of the season he would have been a different story here. As it was, he was decent in the regular season and good in the playoffs. I'm just glad that like most Swede's, he wasn't greedy and take the entire deal. 2. I didn't really have much problem with it. Particularly for a shortened season. Nothing wrong with having two great goalies. 3. I'll agree with this one. But it was MG's first year and Lou was the only elite player on the team. Mitchell would have been a better choice though. 4. I still have no problem with the Ballard trade. It appeared to be a smart move without giving up much. Didn't work out any better for Florida than it did for us. Some trades don't work out. Our entire top six was coming off a career year and Grabner was waiver eligible. It will never matter what Grabner becomes because it wasn't going to happen here. 5. Booth came in playing well and what did we really give up for him? Injuries can take a toll and they seem to have with Booth. That's hindsight. 6. Burrows is a bargain at $4m for the complete game he brings. Wait till you see what ufa's get this summer. 7. If you have two good goalies and can't move one for anything of value because of his contract, you move the other. Either way we still have a high quality goalie so what's the problem? 8. You have a problem with spending money on something that may or may not help that has no effect on the teams cap at all. Why? 9. Hodgson wasn't staying. Period. We traded something we didn't need (and didn't want to be here) for something we did. Isn't that the goal of a trade? Anybody thinking we were getting back a bigger, faster, more physical and meaner player with the same skill as Hodgon (who has none of those traits and never will) is complete moron. Had Kassian, having those traits, had the same skill as Hodgson would have cost far, far more than Hodgson. 10. NTC's get you a cheaper contract that allows you to spend more in other areas. I have no problem with that. We're not the only team that that number of them. Honestly, I see most of your complaints as stupid as opposed to what Gillis having done as stupid.
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