Provost

First real chance to see him in action. Larionov (my favourite player of all time), compares his play with Messier. So that isn’t too bad, even as much as we have good reason to dislike Messier. As a more contemporary comparison, he honestly looks like Bo out there. Strong, hard worker, plays a 200 foot game. Maybe will take more time to develop his offence than I had thought before... but also looks like he could be a good complementary player anywhere in our top 9.

I have suggested many times in the past to do something like this in the dog says of Jan/Feb during normal seasons. The players need something to get up for just like the fans do. Throw a bunch of divisional play kind of like a mini-tourney right in the most boring part of the season. Maybe have some sort of award like soccer having the Cascadia Cup. Rivalries would ramp way up. We would have some player movement ahead of it for teams to load up and try to take as many 4 point games as possible . Really, anything to increase the interest mid season. I think this hockey will be entertaining.

There is a specific provision about bonuses paid. It allows the team to decide whether to take the player to arbitration to try to recover paid bonuses if the player doesn't play that season. We are also allowed to NOT toll the year if Eriksson decided not to play, that is again a team decision. It would be pretty difficult to allow players to opt out in the agreement, and then investigate whenever a player decided to opt out. To find the Canucks were circumventing the cap, they would have to have a 3rd party arbitrator agree that Loui actually wanted to play but made a deal with the team not to. That is a pretty shaky case. Going after the Canucks would look to be punitive, especially since the CBA language specifically would allow for it to happen.

I guess this means Kucherov is out for a while to give them LTIR room?

No idea why you posted a bunch of different times. The math is pretty simple. $83 million with a 23 man roster including Ferland on a 23 man roster. Take away about $3 million by reducing the roster by 3 and that is $80 million, with a cap of $81.5... even with Ferland just on IR off the active roster and not LTIR. They can even wrangle it to have the roster set so that Ferland's money is available for LTIR overage if they need it... but also be running under the cap and banking space when they don't. All those paper type moves happen all the time, it isn't new. The LTIR cushion is set based on the cap situation when the player gets put on it, and is even allowed to be done retroactively. We can have a cap situation where we have the ability to spend $85 million (including Ferlands LTIR salary) if we need to, but run under the $81.5 million cap on a day to day basis and bank cap space each day we are under that. Cap is calculated on a daily basis. Again, this isn't newm teams have been doing it for years shuffling guys on and off the active roster to maximize their flexibility.

His roster was effectively the same, I posted that I agreed with it and he provided numbers. If you can't be bothered to read responses, then that is something you have to work on... not ask other people to do more work to make up for you not wanting to do any.

Calgary played a long stretch with less than 20 players, they didn’t have the cap space to cover short term injuries. As usual, your pairs don’t make sense. It is fine for teams to play with a 21 player roster when not forced to because of specific pandemic issues... but suddenly 20 is “clearly cap circumvention”? It is clearly NOT cap circumvention because the CBA literally outlines that teams are allowed to only carry 20 players. They specifically picked that number as the minimum. A team carrying 20 players fulfills the specifically outlined roster as explicitly outlined in the CBA language. They would have to negotiate a memorandum of agreement between the PA and the league to increase that. Your stuff around replacing players on short term injuries shows that you didn’t bother reading the thread at all. You literally run a short roster to bank cap space and give yourself breathing room. You can keep guys demoted until you need them and then demote them right after the game so you save cap on off days.

I would be surprised if that is all it took to get rid of both of those contracts. I suspect Detroit would ask for more, I would say a 1st would be the cost for either one. The hold up is also the NTC's held by the Tampa players who they want to move... giving the players partial or total control over where they go. They may not be willing to waive it for Detroit, why would they? They have the trade protection and agreed to less than market level deals to get it. They would be moving from a contender to a bottom feeder, and would lose million in the process moving from a jurisdiction with no state taxes. There were reports that a deal was in place for Johnson to move but he wouldn't waive for that team... it being Detroit makes some sense. They tried to use the waiver wires as leverage and it didn't work... now Johnson can just tell them to go stuff it and honour his contract. If our team was creative enough, I could actually see a deal that could involve us as a 3 way swap. One of those decent players could be willing to waive for come here (and not Detroit), we move a guy like Eriksson to Detroit, Tampa gives them their 1st, we give Detroit a mid round pick and/or a decent prospect, and we give Tampa a cheap young player like Rafferty to fill a roster spot. In the end, Eriksson gets to play in the league (closer to his family)... We shed dead cap and take on an only "slightly" overpaid good player for our top 6... Tampa gets themselves under the cap and away from the NTC issues, and gets a decent cheap player... Detroit gets a 1st, a mid round pick or prospect, and a decent (but highly overpaid) defensive player to stabilize their young roster a little. If we could make it a little bigger to get Cernak from Tampa that would be OK too

We have depth, but it is realistically mostly guys who are likely to be 3rd pairing in the NHL. You never know who works out eventually (Bieksa was never thought to be a top 4 guy as a prospect)... but those are outliers and it is more often that highly touted prospects don't live up to their potential than late picks become important players. Juolevi, Rafferty, Tryamkin, and Woo are still pretty big question marks as to whether they will be regular NHLers beyond fringe guys who get a cup of coffee. Everyone is all excited at Juolevi after one good "bubble" camp and 6 very sheltered minutes of play. That is great news from a guy that was close to falling off the radar as a prospect, but he still didn't beat out bottom end guys like Fantenberg or Benn for a job and those guys aren't more than fringe NHLers. I still have hopes for Juolevi to be an every day player, but he has to show a lot to be considered top 4 material. Rafferty is great in the minors, no idea if that translates to the NHL. He is at an age where it is really unlikely he will be more than an injury fill in or complementary player. Maybe he gets to be Stecher level of being a really good 3rd pairing guy who can play higher up if needed on a really bad defence. More likely I think he makes really good trade bait with such high minor league numbers. Some team losing a D in expansion may give us a decent return for him. He would probably be a really good fit in Tampa, especially if they can't afford to keep Cernak, it would be pretty easy to play and excel with the LD partners he would be used with. They would like him because he is cheap and NHL ready. Woo... he is a wildcard. He could still never be an NHLer at all, or he could compare pretty favourably as a carbon copy of Bieksa except with the wheels to play today's game... I don't think anyone would complain about adding that element to our blue line again. His upside is being a complementary partner to Hughes which is exciting, but again he hasn't played pro hockey at any level yet. I think we will get a real answer after this AHL season as to whether he really is going to be a top 4 NHLer (if there is one). I think he should be partnered with Rathbone as the Utica top pairing and play a crap ton of minutes because all the other "veteran" AHL D are going to be on our taxi squad. Rathbone is probably our best bet to be a top 4 player. There is every reason to believe he can copy the success of his former partner Adam Fox. He showed it wasn't Fox carrying that pairing by getting better even after Fox left for the NHL. He can easily slot in on our 2nd pairing within a couple of years and be running the 2nd unit PP. Tryamkin is a player I have been crazy for since he played for us and I want to see him signed to a 2 year deal next offseason. There is every reason to worry that the game has gotten too fast for him and that he won't be able to play the uptempo style that Green like to employ and the rest of our D core is built for. Maybe there is a place for him on the 3rd pair or as the depth steady stay at home PKer... but maybe he will just get walked every night by faster forwards. The KHL is a slow league, so even his break out season this year doesn't tell us much. I know folks are going to whine about me being negative by not assuming all our prospects are going to become top 4 NHLers... but it is just reality. All prospects don't do that. If one of them hits and the other guys are replacement level fill ins playing regularly... we have done pretty well from that crop. We are still going to be well served by using our expansion protected slots to trade for a D upgrade from a team that is going to lose a guy for nothing. There will be guys available for pennies onthe dollar who would be an upgrade on any of our D except Hughes and Schmidt.

Maybe he will be OK... he has had a grand total of 6 minutes of real NHL action under his belt so playing in the top 4 would be a huge ask. I think Petterson and Hughes have made people forget that being a rookie is hard for pretty much everyone.

This. It is totally fair to say our Top 4 has been improved but our overall defence has (likely) gotten worse. None of our prospects vying for a spot are real locks for being capable top 4D in the league since none of them have played anything more than token minutes in the league. To ask one of them to play 30 minutes a night like Stecher had to do on occasion would be courting disaster. That is not saying that it would be a terrible decision to just play kids and see where the chips land... but that is absolutely taking a huge risk for the season that can have a long impact. If we plan on playing Demko half the games, we don't want to destroy his confidence by doing it behind a terrible leaky defence. I would say that Demko is more important to our future than any of our D prospects who would be getting a shot so I don't feel like risking his development may be the wisest course. On the other side of the argument, we have three "maybe" NHL ready prospects and need to see if they can play. Juolevi, Rafferty, and Rathbone.

Ummm he didn’t have an agent.... that was literally what the post was about. He decided to be his own agent and was terrible at it.... including not even having teams know is to reach him.

His actual salary is down on purpose this year as a demand from his end. Agents are structuring deals around the called escrow limits. A $4.6 million salary with 30% reduced via escrow and deferrals is worth less than the same dollars in later years with only a 6% escrow cap. Toffoli was one of the players who did just fine this offseason.

Yep... it appears agents can be useful. I heard one of the insiders saying he was asking for something in the $5 million range. Apparently there were also several GMs who said they wanted to call and check in on him but didn’t have his phone number or a way to get a hold of him. Maybe not the brightest of bulbs.

I don’t think he is AHL bound... he is an ideal taxi squad guy. He is older and doesn’t need developments minutes badly. He can ride the pines for an entire season practicing with the big club. Honestly in his situation it could be the best for him. If the big club coaches become really familiar with him with daily interactions and like what he brings... it may pay dividends next season.

... and to me adding Hamonic doesn’t knock a kid out of the lineup... it knocks Benn out of the lineup. It also avoids the problem of just burying a young kid’s confidence by throwing them into 25 minutes a night against tough competition invade of an injury. That hurts their development, not helps it. We will make do without the add if we have to, but we would be better off on all fronts by having an extra veteran.

I think you are conflating different things. Experienced vets on cheap one year contracts are a good thing. Expensive vets on long term contracts are a bad thing. Hamonic would be cheaper than Benn and only on a 1 year deal. I am fairly confident that one of the young guys is ready for a bottom pairing role. I am absolutely NOT confident that any of them are ready for a top 4 role, even just for injury spot filling. Benn is pretty clearly not capable of doing that either. If we don't have a reasonably reliable 3rd pairing, the tpo 4 will get overplayed and at least one of them is going to get hurt during the course of the season. A 3rd pairing of Juolevi-Hamonic is one that can get a reasonable amount of 5 on 5 minutes. A 3rd pairing of Juolevi-Benn isn't going to play that much.

I don’t see it that way at all. Pre-Covid teams have been doing this already. Many teams with a cap crunch have run bare bones rosters because they didn’t have the money for short term injury call ups. They have the minimum roster size clause just for this purpose. Clubs with their farm team in the same city have been running with less than full 23 man rosters consistently, almost as a rule for years. The league and NHLPA is just not likely to open up negotiations for the CBA again at this juncture, especially as poorly as the last attempt went. Most of the stuff you suggest would require that to happen in a major way. By far the easiest thing to do is simply leave the rules as is. You could just waive the player off the active roster and not physically assign them to the AHL team... becoming a de-facto taxi squad. Insisting on a 13 man roster to use a taxi squad puts those teams at a competitive disadvantage compared with teams that can (and will) run with less than 23 players. The solution that doesn’t involve opening big swaths of the CBA is just to let any team carry extra players due to Covid travel complications (even within countries) but have them not count against the cap. Most teams will take advantage of it because they don’t want to insert a bunch of extra potential exposures by flying guys in and out. The Canadian clubs with US farm teams will just be forced to do it due to travel. There is a long term disadvantage to that. On the other side. That would be fair and who knows if they are happy to screw a few Canadian clubs and put them at a disadvantage.

They "could" do any of that but I don't see any motivation for doing so. They would be adding the taxi squad so players are available in case of injury. Making it a competitive disadvantage by making it impossible for a team with injury trouble to recall players doesn't seem like it would make any sense. They just have to make sure all the team have a level playing field. There are also teams that have already said they plan on running a really slim roster already due to cap issues. The teams with a farm team co-located can do this easily. The CBA says a minimum 20 man roster, so they would have to open that up for negotiation to change it and make it more... again for no discernable reason aside from undoing what they are trying to fix with taxi squads.

Ya... that is exactly the type of roster I think would happen if we have a taxi squad. It will also mean a huge trade boom between now and Christmas since teams who thought they were cap strapped could afford to add another fairly cheap player. If they don't really have to carry spares because they have taxi squad guys right there, that saves $2.1-3.2 million in money you can bury and use the player literally for the game if needed and then send back down. It isn't completely clear, but it doesn't seem to include the $1.7 million in overages we owe... so I think that 20 man roster leaves us a shade over $2 million with Hamonic signed. It is all LTIR, so we can't bank it for future bonuses owed... but it is enough to call up injury players and sign a guy with bonuses like Podkolzin when he is done his season.

It will definitely be a balance between getting game time for prospects and being competitive. I don't see the team wanting to risk blowing the whole year just to make sure a couple of guys get a few more games. None of the other teams in the league seem to be operating that way. They will have to come up with a plan regardless for the bulk of prospects. We know that they will need a taxi squad of extra players available, that isn't even a question now. There isn't cross border travel permitted and they have to decide the plan now as it will have roster/cap implications for the NHL. We won't even know if the AHL is running until after all the decision will have been made. The question is what to do with the taxi squad. Is it going to be just enough to buffer the big club for injuries like we had in the bubble? That means several prospects just won't get much playing time. Hence why I think it will be a strategic decision on who to keep on it. Rathbone is probably fairly equivalent to Juolevi, but due to his age and place in the development cycle it could mean he goes and plays in the AHL while lesser (older) guys stay on a taxi squad. The Canadian teams could decide to keep all their prospects close to home like I said above and control a year of their development. That could be if the AHL really looks in doubt (which it is currently). That would mean enough to ice a "prospect" team and play "some" actual games... even 4 on 4 games with real competition. Picture 6 one week long tournaments against other Canadian prospects clubs spread over 3-4 months with a ton of development, strength training, etc controlled by the NHL club between. We should know the answer to most of this within a few days since we are effectively out of time for a mid January start as it stands.

That is the "current" plan... I have doubts, at least whether it will be a really recognizable season or not. I can see some sort of tournament style or hub play in jurisdictions where they can have fans. If all of that fails, then I suspect NHL teams are going to gather their own prospects and organize prospects tourneys on their own like we always see in Penticton. They need their young guys to play minutes and develop and can't have a bunch of guys with no home to play in for what will be 1 1/2 years by the time it is likely over. Heck, I would happily tune into the TV for a few "prospects tourneys" with all the Canadian teams playing their own available prospects against each other. It would give the taxi squad guys and the guys with no playing home (in the absence of the AHL) to get competitive playing time.

Ya, I just think about how badly Edler will fare with a compressed schedule and being played 25+ minutes a night to shelter a weak 3rd pairing. That is a recipe for drastically reduced effectiveness and injury. Add a single injury to our D and having Benn or Juolevi playing those 25 minutes is disastrous and would be like going back to the days of having Pouliot and Hutton playing in our top 4. We need a guy who can step up to play in the top 4 if needed or really anchor a 3rd pairing so it doesn't have to be sheltered. Hughes-Hamonic Edler-Schmidt Juolevi-Myers Brisebois-Benn Taxi squad of Rafferty, Chatfield, and Sautner. Rathbone in the AHL playing huge developmental minutes with Woo.

That is 6, not 7 extra players. As per the post, carrying 20 guys on the active roster instead of 31 to save cap space. Petterson, Horvat, Miller, Pearson, Boeser, Gaudette, Roussel, Motte, Sutter, Beagle, Virtanen as the "lock" forwards. McEwan as the fringe 12th guy. On a full 23 man roster you carry 1 extra forward at least... so make that Eriksson as the "normal" extra guy. That means the taxi squad of forwards adds Baertschi, Hawyrluk, and Bailey On defence Hughes, Schmidt, Edler, Myers, Benn as "locks" Then probably Juolevi as the 6th. On a full 23 man roster you carry 2 extra D, so add in Rafferty and Chatfield as "normal" depth roster players. That means an extra taxi squad of Rafferty, Sautner, and Brisebois 3 extra forwards and 3 extra D. That is 6 taxi squad guys compared to a normal 23 man roster. It doesn't get multiplied by 31 because only a few teams will be forced to do it because of cross border travel. I suspect all teams will be given the choice, to ensure no one complains about a competitive advantage... but the teams with farm clubs in the same country (or even city in many cases) would far prefer those guys to actually be playing minutes rather than mostly practicing for an entire season. Even if every team DID carry an extra 7 players ...again, do you think the NHL with billions of dollars of revenue at stake cares even slightly about the level of the competition in the AHL when they are scraping by trying to find solutions for their own league? Especially since there may not even be an AHL season in the end, at least one that is recognizable. They don't have the money to operate without fans and with the extra costs due to Covid. Most of the Euro leagues will be finishing their seasons as the AHL gets going. The KHL and SHL end just after the tentative start of the AHL season. So as the seasons goes, there will be a ton of available players who could be added to AHL rosters who wouldn't normally be available, that is a decision for the AHL and nothing to do with the NHL... they could delay the start of their season by another month to hope there will be more arenas that can have fans as vaccines roll out. They would then have amazing competition level taking on players from Euro leagues for almost the entire season. NHL teams would probably be onboard for that as their prospects are getting to play and may be nearby for possible adds to playoff rosters.

I would too... but Benning’s recent comments suggest the “good defensive” player isn’t going to be on the farm all season.