I went to do it when I first saw the team tweet about it. I signed in, I went through several screens explaining how it worked, then I had to pick a bunch of players for one of the divisions and none of the headshots matched up to the right player. Bin. It's almost impressive how hard the NHL seems to try to make bad things worse.
I figured it out, eventually but super clunky, and WAY more complex than it needs to be. Then I went back today to vote again, and it asked me if I wanted to use same players, but all the slots were blank. So I can to go through and set it all up again, and it seemed worse that I remembered. Really poorly designed and run.
More importantly, draft picks in the CHL aren't worth much compared to the NHL. So trading four 1st picks in the NHL would be outrageous but in junior hockey it happens all the time.
Picks, especially 1st rounders, in the CHL are more about recruiting and players you can actually bring in rather than the best players.
Yeah they didn't have a gamebreaker and that hurt them, but the Caps under Trotz were under the same system and shows what can be done with one. We don't know if the Kings eventually end up with one (and they may have one in Fiala). Teams don't need to play fast, super high paced, offensive styles to win Cups. You can still grind and block it out.
Referees need to do a way better job enforcing this. If you feel the need to go after a guy who just laid a clean hit, you should be penalized.
How Kings didn't get an instigator on Danault's fight was nuts and I am probably the most anti-Oilers bloke on this board after the Calgary fans.
I had Clarke #1 overall on my list and even though I am an idiot, I still won't change it as of now. I one hundred million percent agree that his skating at the moment is holding him back, but he's way smarter and has much more offensive tools than Power or any other defenceman in that draft. He will struggle at the defensive game at times because I think he plays smaller than his size in the d-zone, but I like his talent more than Power even if Owen will be much better two-way and in the important moments of the game.
As Hench and Balthazar mentioned, junior trades tend to be crazy and there have been ones like this such as when Ryan Johansen and Brayden Schenn got traded (also when Tavares got traded in the OHL too). The problem is that CHL teams have like 20 rounds or something, so a lot of the picks won't ever amount to much. The other problem is that in the WHL, they pick the youngest players in their draft (Bantan years) of the three CHL leagues and that comes with a ton and I mean a TON of top busts. Go to Eliteprospect, click on drafts, scroll down to WHL draft, and go through all 1st overall WHL picks and you will find a lot of bad players who are either retired or currently playing in the Canadian University hockey league (or Europe).
We'd have games with 20 power plays a night... each time the NHL has cracked down on penalties, coaches and players start complaining until the NHL relents. The single best example was right after the 04-05 lockout. Unless you want penalty box parades, you don't want the rulebook called 100%.
Gotta disagree with you 100% here. Players will adapt. It will no doubt be a penalty box parade until that happens but believe me, the coaches will MAKE that happen.
They really don't though... the period after the 04-05 lockout really portrays that well. The NHL came in hard on call certain rules... what happened wasn't that players adapted. It was that players and coaches started calling out the refs and the league on the rules. Complaining about the penalty box parade. Within a couple years, the NHL was reaching new lows in penalties being called. It wasn't that there wasn't still hooking and slashing, it was that they refs just didn't call it any more. Even to the point where we had a new mini-dead puck era.
I did not like Clarke defensively at the World Juniors, he made some dumb plays. Just feels like a guy that is good in juniors but his play won't translate to the NHL.
For every slow, not talented, thug complaining is a small skilled guy that makes his bread on the power play cheering.
Byfield to me has always had a skillset that wouldn’t translate well. He doesn’t think the game at a super high level, he doesn’t use his teammates particularly well, and once he wasn’t bigger/faster than everyone or good enough to go hero mode on his competitors he struggled.
One of those "I get away with this in juniors all the time" type plays.
But you are making it sound like the hooking and slashing we have today is the same as what we had in the 90s. It's completely different. We don't have folks taking out Bure's knees today. Yes, MacKinnon and MacDavid and other stars get grabbed, held and obstructed but it's nowhere close to what it was when we had the likes of Derian Hatcher making the All-Star games.
