OT: Around the NHL: Cup or bust for the Leafs and Oilers? Bust it is!

[Sidney the Kidney]

Jake on pace for 90 points. We really shouldn’t be surprised to see Sid struggling to put up points when DOC was the replacement.

I argued this all summer. Going into the season with DOC penciled in on the top line was crazy, but some folks on here kept going on about it's fine and how good the line looked down the stretch.

Sorry, but you can't replace a point per game player with a 30 point player and say, "everything's fine". DOC, no matter how good he is, isn't a top line player and isn't the answer to replacing a 35+ goal, 75+ point winger on Sid's wing. Especially when the other winger on the line is an often injured, incredibly streaky Rust.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Dubas needs to call up Sweeney and see if he wants Grz back asap. See if he can give them a 4th and Grz for Wotherspoon and their 3rd and call it a day.

Boston just got wrecked lol.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

I think the league is better with McDavid in it. I don’t get insecure when his “followers” call him better than Sid because I know it’s not true.

Jake on pace for 90 points. We really shouldn’t be surprised to see Sid struggling to put up points when DOC was the replacement.

I’m also will never understand how the org didn’t see McCanns talent.

Because this org is a joke run by boneheads.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

CBJ are fun team to watch right now. They’ve got so much speed up and down their lineup.

I like Evason and was a fan of what he did with Filip Forsberg and I was kind of choked when Guerin fired him, but he definitely deserved it for how he had the Wild play for that stretch before he was canned. He's been fired up with the Jackets with something to prove but he's a good example of being fired and coming back and not making the same mistakes.

The 19 games last year, he had the PK dead last, they were getting awful defensive play all around, bleeding goals left and right and he just wasn't the same coach as the previous two seasons. Nice to see him bounce back with a very young team - which I think is the right team for him to coach right now, he's good with young players and developing them and the CBJ are loaded with just that.

You can't have a dead last PK, near the bottom PP and have your elite talent Kaprizov having one of his worst starts, he was something like -10 in that first 19 games. He finished the season +19 and went from 0.95/ppg to 1.35/ppg after Evason was canned.

Because this org is a joke run by boneheads.

Owned by boneheads.

What makes it worse is that the NHL has had a rise in valuation for the teams, the Penguins went up 20% in value which is more of a league wide thing but having a team that hasn't made the playoffs in the last 2yrs and hasn't had many sellouts, that just gives FSG more time to play this out with Sullivan.

Dubas - To me he's done a really good job as a Director of Hockey Ops, as a GM he's mediocre as shit, but he hasn't hurt this team as much as everyone wants to make it out to be, he's really not helped it much but he hasn't made it so much worse either, that's Sullivan's bread and butter - to make simple things look harder than they need to and make good things worse.

I still think candidates didn't seem interested because of the dynamics of Sully and Werner/FSG and the whole having the hammer bs that Sully has. You see what happened to JR and Hextall and do you want to be the scapegoat when the coach does it to you? Especially when you can't fire him because FSG literally gave this clown an extension 2yrs before his contract was even up which is unheard of in the NHL. But the moment they fire Sullivan, I guarantee that summer, you'd see Dubas hire a GM and take a step back into his original role.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I argued this all summer. Going into the season with DOC penciled in on the top line was crazy, but some folks on here kept going on about it's fine and how good the line looked down the stretch.

Sorry, but you can't replace a point per game player with a 30 point player and say, "everything's fine". DOC, no matter how good he is, isn't a top line player and isn't the answer to replacing a 35+ goal, 75+ point winger on Sid's wing. Especially when the other winger on the line is an often injured, incredibly streaky Rust.

I don't think anyone thought a player or two were going to replace Jake's production. At best, you hoped the usage would be better so you got some extra scoring out of other lines - Like Doc putting up 40+, Puustinen getting better usage to get 40+ (points, not goals), Bunting not falling off the face of the earth and producing his career average of 50+ and a healthy Rakell being back to 60+ would have mitigated that loss by committee, but we forgot the biggest X factor - Mike Sullivan.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

There is no coach Seattle can bring in that will fix Shane Wright, that's a player that needs to get traded to really kick him in the ass to get his shit together. I thought Bylsma would at least figure it out with him, Wright is a solid 2-way C and those types Disco usually thrives with, he did in Coachella, but the moment he's back in the NHL, he just goes entirely into his D mode game, turns into a ghost offensively.

It's so odd watching him play, you can see a player that could break out but also hesitates a lot in his own game. He still forces passes through defensemen in the neutral zone and is not the best at the transition game up the ice, this is where Bjorkstrand and Tolvanen did make sense but they're not great skaters so unless they start in the offensive zone, it's not doing much. But maybe they'll figure it out, I think Tanev was the best LW for him with Bjorkstrand on the RW.

 

[eXile3]

Poehling with a nice play last night. 5 points in 11. Another guy I’m unclear on why we felt it necessary to walk away from and replace with an older, slower player.

 

[eXile3]

There is no coach Seattle can bring in that will fix Shane Wright, that's a player that needs to get traded to really kick him in the ass to get his shit together. I thought Bylsma would at least figure it out with him, Wright is a solid 2-way C and those types Disco usually thrives with, he did in Coachella, but the moment he's back in the NHL, he just goes entirely into his D mode game, turns into a ghost offensively.

It's so odd watching him play, you can see a player that could break out but also hesitates a lot in his own game. He still forces passes through defensemen in the neutral zone and is not the best at the transition game up the ice, this is where Bjorkstrand and Tolvanen did make sense but they're not great skaters so unless they start in the offensive zone, it's not doing much. But maybe they'll figure it out, I think Tanev was the best LW for him with Bjorkstrand on the RW.

I mean he’s also only 20 years old. I’ve always, and continue to feel, Cooley was the best player on that draft.

 

[Buddy Bizarre]

Poehling with a nice play last night. 5 points in 11. Another guy I’m unclear on why we felt it necessary to walk away from and replace with an older, slower player.

I was a HUGE Poehling fan. I thought he added some nice speed to our bottom 6.
Rumor (and I'll emphasize that) was the Pens thought he had some long term injury concern and didn't want to resign him

 

[Gurglesons]

Poehling with a nice play last night. 5 points in 11. Another guy I’m unclear on why we felt it necessary to walk away from and replace with an older, slower player.