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Provost

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Everything posted by Provost

  1. The OP was about being proactive and leveraging the trade deadline to accrue assets and then seeing what we have in some younger players. Now that trade opportunity has passed (with a tiny bit of action) and ironically we have to play the kids due to Covid. Is there any path to the playoffs? Everything has fallen our way with both Montreal and Calgary playing really badly... but we are still really far out of it. Even though the odds now are still about the same (a little better at around 18%) than weeks ago, there does seem to be a glimmer of hope. Mainly, will a bunch of kids in the bottom six who are playing for NHL jobs be more able to scrabble out a few extra wins at a time late in the season when other teams start coasting and resting up for playoff runs? It would have been better if our last games were against Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton as their playoff position might be baked in at that point and would be resting key players for the final few games. Now it will be pride games against Calgary to close things off. Possible? We have to win 5 in a row just to get anywhere near close to a 50% chance to win, and that is unlikely especially if Petterson and Demko are out over that period. With the deadline having passed and no more opportunity to improve the team longer term, I hope they at least play the younger guys and see if there is anyone that is close to ready, or that should be re-signed. We really need to see Rathbone and Juolevi as their readiness is going to have a lot to do with whether Edler coming back is realistic or a priority... or at least to give us leverage in negotiations.
  2. Someone said it was tagged as the Canary Islands.
  3. Well Miller was a bottom 6 guy on Tampa. The actual contending teams have at least one top 6 guy playing down the roster giving them depth. Was Kessel really a 3rd liner when he moved to Pittsburgh? Line numbering is a little arbitrary. Is Miller really a 3rd liner if he gets fewer 5v5 minutes but is top 6 minutes amongst forwards on the team because he plays the 1st unit PP and some PK? Hoglander could ostensibly play on a 2nd line with Horvat but get fewer minutes than alone 3rd like guys because he is only on PP2. There could absolutely be a case to be made for having a 3rd line with Pearson and Miller on it if we could find/develop another couple wingers. Same as there could be a case to have Tryamkin play with Hughes next season which is technically in the top 4... but be 5th-6th in ice time amongst the D because of special teams.
  4. It does make sense to have it local to Vancouver. It makes it easier for the big club to keep an eye on players and use their resources/medical staff to help the prospects. More importantly, it buys us an extra million or so in cap space. You can run with less than a full 23 man roster, especially when not on the road, if you can just get a guy to drive down the road for a game if need be to fill in for a last minute injury. Having said that, I am in the Okanagan now and would love to be able to see some games... so Kelowna would be good too!
  5. 5-1 Toronto Hyman I think they will take it easy on us once the game is a blowout.
  6. He has definitely taken a huge jump in development, his NHL prospects were looking pretty grim and now it is possible he carves himself a role as a complementary player. These are the guys that should be in our bottom six and not well paid veterans. With enough playing time, maybe one or two of the Lind/Gadjovich/Jasek level guys actually blossom and become material contributors rather than fringe NHLers.
  7. I think it is really important to keep in mind, this is the weakest the AHL has ever been so play this year is not really indicative of improvement. Take out 4-6 guys from the AHL to be sitting on each taxi squad and you have taken most of the best 125-175 players out of the AHL.. and filled in the empty slots with ECHL level guys.
  8. Even at those rates of play we are nowhere near catching them. Those assumptions would have required us to have played that well against teams other than Montreal for the whole season... and we haven’t. Montreal going .500 the rest of the way gets them to 61 points. If we play .600 the rest of the way, we get to 57.8 points.... nowhere near Montreal. To get to 62 points and beating Montreal if they play at just at .500 means we would actually have to go a little better than .710. Something like a 13-5-1 record. At the same time we also have to catch Calgary who also has a better winning % than us and plays Montreal 4 more times.
  9. People are over estimating the demise of the Canadiens. They are still 5-5-0 in the last 10 games and are on a 1 game losing streak. Most teams have little stretches where they lose a few or win a few that is nothing to get worked up about.... it isn’t a sign of anything as it is just what happens to every team over the course of a season. A larger rolling average tells you a lot more. They have to be a lot worse than .500 for us to catch them.
  10. He is. I am discounting this year a lot for the AHL because it is the lowest level of competition the league has ever had. Taxi squads means the bulk of the best players that are normally in the AHL just aren’t there. The gap is made up by lower level ECHL type players. Middling players should be tearing it up this year.
  11. Ya, with a good portion of the games remaining being played between two teams we are chasing, it makes the marg harder than folks are realizing. It was 5 games where there are 10–12 points guaranteed that will go to one team we are chasing.... it does no good to catch up to one, if the other one is moving farther ahead. I guess our hope is that Calgary wins them all but loses against everyone else while at the same time Montreal hardly wins any games?
  12. There is no world where we can fit those cap hits on our roster. The cost of exiting enough money to make it work would be horrific. There is no world where Tampa gives away Cernak for nothing. Tampa is better off letting expansion in play out and seeing who Seattle takes. Gadjovich isn’t likely ever to become an NHLer, why would anyone trade for him?
  13. I think they should play all the taxi squad and avoid playing guys back to back as much as possible. No one will blame them for mailing it in a little in the next week or two to avoid getting injuries that may impact next season. JT sure sounds pretty defeated/frustrated and that he isn't enjoying playing hockey even before this. It is going to be weird for the opponents. They will feel for our team just as fellow players, but also need points. I don't see any really heated games early on.
  14. I think the player KB was probably referring to was Sutter who had interest at the deadline but his entire family was down with Covid.
  15. So presumably one of our two top guys is still likely out and DiPietro will dress as the backup and we need another guy in town in case of injuries.
  16. Some of that info is dated. He was being badly misused in Buffalo and they were riding him more than 26 minutes a game when he was new to the league, he couldn't handle it. Once they dropped him to the 22 minutes a game level, suddenly he became dramatically more effective including defensively. He was only a -10 while leading the team in almost 23 minutes per game of ice time. The team as a whole is a -33 goal differential while at even strength... so he is holding his own when on the ice. I think it is fair to think of him as very similar to Edler stylistically. Maybe miscast as a true #1.. probably a #2-3 ideally on a good defence but still a massively useful defender. Depending on who else you have on the blue line, you pair him with either Hughes or Edler next year and you have a really good pairing. With Hughes, Risto would have much more limited minutes as he wouldn't get all the PP minutes that Hughes does, Risto probably plays our 2nd unit PP. With Edler, then you use Risto for a little more offensive punch to that pairing. I would trade a late 1st for Ristolainen, so Miller and some cap dump in Virtanen seems reasonably fair to me as we then can use that cap space to upgrade elsewhere. Eakin is more than a throw in, and could fill our 3C slot in the short term.
  17. I was listening to the radio yesterday and it said that Beagle was close to returning. Not sure if they meant close to coming off the Covid list... but there still hasn't been any actual word that he is even going to be on LTIR for the rest of the season, never mind next season.
  18. You mean the exact number we would have if we switched Schmidt and Risto back? Changing the goalposts doesn’t make your previous comment make any more sense. First you were worried about having too many veterans with their “bodies breaking down”, now it is having too many younger guys? Switching Schmidt for a guy who plays more minutes doesn’t give us less bodies to play defence like you suggested. It also switches a guy hitting 30 (who will be “breaking down”) with an experienced guy 3 years younger and just starting his prime years.
  19. I guess I am just higher on the player. Once Buffalo stopped playing him 26 minutes a game he has gotten drastically better. Maybe it would need to be a deal after July 1st where you can have an agreement on an extension before pulling the trigger on the trade.
  20. If only the original post had the exact answer to the question you posed... wouldn’t that be something! If only the traders brought back a top pairing D who plays more minutes than Schmidt and is a much better complementary partner for Hughes than anyone we have in the organization...
  21. It is true about Schmidt... Jersey was an example, we should be able to find a youngish but established top 6 winger + from one of the 22 teams that he can be traded to. It is quite possible we could even make a trade with Seattle after the expansion draft. With the Jersey example, I don’t think I am reaching too high to say that Schmidt is worth more than Bratt at this stage and let’s us move some cap in that trade.
  22. For every player that leaves, we need to replace them. We currently have a below average prospect pool as most of our guys have already graduated to the NHL. Next year once Podkolzin (and possibly even Lind and Rathbone) on the team, we will again have a bottom end prospect pool, with really only our upcoming top 10 pick as a legit shot at being a higher end NHLer. There isn’t much cheap help coming after this wave of guys, so replacing expiring contracts will be at market prices.
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