Around The League 24/25. Parity, blessed parity.
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Old Boys Club
Anita Max Wynn
- Nov 3, 2013
- 6,033
- 5,127
He's going to get PAID this offseason.
Doubling his career shooting percentage, arbitration eligible, coming off of a 'show me' deal, BUF has been playing him ~20 mins a game for the last month.
Could see > 5M AAV with the rising cap.
Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
Color me with being fine Blues are taking last WC spot. Would rather have them in than Calgary or Vancouver. Sure Blues took our pants down. I blame the Oilers for that, not the Blues.
Winnipeg probably end up facing the Blues. Will be interesting if Blues continue to be hot and Jets playing like crap last several games.
Winnipeg probably end up facing the Blues. Will be interesting if Blues continue to be hot and Jets playing like crap last several games.
Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
Was jsut surmising Blues will likely face the Jets first round. Could even be interesting series. Jets doing their almost always late season collapse.
TopShelfGloveSide
Registered User
- Dec 10, 2018
- 17,714
- 23,756
Garbo Man
Meh
lakai17
Registered User
- Aug 10, 2006
- 20,918
- 1,333
A Taylor Hall hatty with the Canes. Can you believe that in 2025. Good for him.
McDrai
Registered User
- Mar 29, 2009
- 23,871
- 18,270
All the wrong teams winning. Vegas and LA are on heaters which leads me to believe that without McDrai, we finish 3rd in the division.
Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
Brutal OOT. All other clubs that impact us winning. Oilers again in third place and Kings with a game in hand and winning every game. Kings have a ton of home games left where they hardly ever lose.
Kings walking all over the Bruins 7-2. So dominant there were track marks. Oilers haven't been on top of their game since when?
Guess we gotta hope they figure it out. I thought nothing of the Kings team this year but they're flying and now Jeannot and Byfield are getting going. Kings didn't add much of anything at TDL but somehow they're going better.
Kings walking all over the Bruins 7-2. So dominant there were track marks. Oilers haven't been on top of their game since when?
Guess we gotta hope they figure it out. I thought nothing of the Kings team this year but they're flying and now Jeannot and Byfield are getting going. Kings didn't add much of anything at TDL but somehow they're going better.
Oilhawks
Now behold the awful price of treason!
- Nov 24, 2011
- 25,936
- 44,353
Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
For sure. Bruins look to be terrible for a longtime. They've also gone away from the Boston Strong kind of thing which was words anyway but not sure how this lineup will play to their fans. They're so used to at least Regular Season success.
bellagiobob
Registered User
- Jul 27, 2006
- 21,783
- 50,203
yukoner88
Registered User
And Rutherford is praised as an elite hockey executive.
He did nothing but spun tires in the mud in Carolina, abandoned Pittsburgh the moment things became challenging, and now is in the middle of dropping an anchor through the floor of their boat.
But thank f*** he's doing it to a rival lol
bellagiobob
Registered User
- Jul 27, 2006
- 21,783
- 50,203
Vegmelka has been awful as of late, dodged a bullet paying a King's ransom trying to acquire him.
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Behind Enemy Lines
Registered User
Gotta say I've never liked the Blues but absolutely despise them now. Usually it's the Flamers acting like a farm system to Florida, Dallas, Vegas but the Oilers management historic bungle gifted two young pedigree talents. I've also shifted to cheering for all Canadian teams to make the playoffs even with bile in my mouth a Flamers option over carpetbagger Blues. The NHL lost its soul years ago pandering to U.S. market and revenue potential. Would rather see some Canadian team success though a first round exit for Flamers and perennial tire spinning as a mediocre franchise is as far as my delusion goes.
Alex, I'll take things I never thought I'd say or want for two hundred please! haha
Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
Lately posters have been diverting to this is some kind of scheme by the NHL. You seem even to be hinting at that. Its the Oilers fault and the Oilers fault only that they lost their best prospects to offersheets. One could expand to its the Oilers fault they enacted offersheets when few other clubs ever did so and plundered players like Dustin Penner and thought that was fine.
One could easily think Karma and stupidity bit the Oilers ass. The way I'm viewing it.
TBH I'd like to see another league. A real World hockey League would be nice. But now with protectionist market protections that would never happen. NHL shouldn't have a continental monopoly, and cutting the onion not having any competition isn't good for hockey, or even the NHL or viewers. The league can be as poorly run as it can be and our only option is stop consuming.
Behind Enemy Lines
Registered User
No I'm not a conspiracy theorist. It's just smart business for the NHL to focus their primary objective of revenue creation on the big population base to the South. That's where the financial growth will be with increasing franchise fees and also the big money national revenue deals are which are vital for all North American professional sports teams to diversify and grow beyond the financial limits of bums in seats. The gift of fandom delivers is that this primary profit motivation gets clouded by soft emotive romantic notions about the love of the game and associated sentimentality. Of course we see the cold splash of wet water on this every strike and lockout when the best interests and 'love of the game' gets parked for carving out the big business's share of money.
Canada's a deeply established basically fully exploited, fished out monopolistic heritage market. A steady, largely secured revenue stream that doesn't require a lot of attention or resources. Pursuing the 340 million population, world economic driving market with all of its potential revenue streams is a no-brainer. This is just another big business whose product happens to be sports entertainment.
Absolutely agree this was a complete botch job of inexperienced Oilers management who failed to see the signs of a changing marketplace with finally some spending growth coming out of the covid stalled cap; bullish external evaluation of their poorly developed young pedigree talent; failure to be pro-active in negotiating with young, emergent talent coming off proving points with a deep Cup run; one frustrated player with a public trade request; and blowing past their Cap ceiling on July 1 week. There's no conspiracy there. Just a historic, precedent setting poor organization decision.
I appreciate your final point. It took the WHA to get Edmonton into the NHL cartel and to force significant change to a pretty stodgy NHL monopoly. Unfortunately I think that would be pretty tough to challenge in this modern context.
