Best takes you've had on this site ?

[Bouboumaster]

I thought trading Halak after his playoff run and moving forward with Carey Price was the right move.

Same here

 

[Voight]

In recent history, that Byfield wasn't a bust and would turn out just fine.

When people were writing Ovechkin off back in 2012 and even 2016/2017, I still maintained that he'd lead his team to a cup and would break Gretzky's goal record.

 

[Three On Zero]

All of them.

 

[Avs2022]

I f***ing knew that Tyson Jost was gonna bust as a top 10 pick.

I was never impressed with him and had reservations when they drafted him.

 

[Bood12]

I always knew John Tavares was going to leave the Islanders and sign with the Leafs, I took so much abuse from my fellow "fans" for even suggesting it

 

[Hennessy]

Saying Lundqvist would be a stud when the Rangers were starting Weekes.

 

[Quinntessential]

Before Quinn Hughes played an NHL game, I predicted he would be a generational player who would break every record for Canucks defensemen and many league records also.

 

[RRhoads]

I called Kane to score in OT in his first game back to Chicago.

 

[Breakfast of Champs]

That drafting Seth Jones over Mackinnon would be one of the biggest blunders in draft history (lucky for Colorado it didn't happen). To go further, even when Mackinnon was in the "bust" phase around year 3 I still believed he had the highest upside of anyone in the league outside of McDavid.


That Suzuki was twice the player Kotkaniemi was, it was evident the moment suzuki made the nhl but many people and habs fans debated.

 

[Breakfast of Champs]

Before or during their rookie seasons:
- Gaudreau had 105+ point upside and would contend for scoring titles
- Fox would be a perennial Norris contender
- Bratt would become a PPG player
- Seider over Broberg at the draft
- Patrick Kane should be a top pick in 2007 (back when he was rated ~25th)

Being a bit negative:
- Bedard would not be a generational player
- Wright should not be the top pick in 2022 - I had Lambert and Casey ahead of him, which I feel pretty good about at this point.
- Was 100% certain that Lazar and Zacha would significantly underperform vs their draft positions.
- Gilbert Brule and Benoit Pouliot would bust

Zacha is actually pretty par for the course for a 6th overall. Coming off 57 and 59 pt seasons, pretty good all around play. Slow start but he isn't significantly underperforming anymore

 

[WhiskeyYerTheDevils]

Zacha is actually pretty par for the course for a 6th overall.

Not when you're picking 6th in arguably the strongest (or 2nd strongest) draft of all time.

Coming off 57 and 59 pt seasons, pretty good all around play.

Playing alongside one of the best scoring wingers will do that.

Here are Zacha's splits with and without Pastrnak at 5v5 since joining the Bruins:

Zacha w/Pastrnak
1,474.9 mins
1.02 g/60
1.75 a/60
2.77 p/60

Zacha w/o Pastrnak
703.6 mins
0.34 g/60 (-0.68)
1.02 a/60 (-0.73)
1.36 p/60 (-0.51)

His goal scoring literally triples while playing with Pastrnak, and his points/60 more than doubles.

His p/60 without Pastrnak would put him 38th in his draft over that time frame, him between Kolesar's 1.39 and Beauvillier's 1.31. Without Pastrnak, Zacha has produced like a bottom 6 player.

And just for reference, here are Zacha's numbers before joining Boston:

0.45 g/60
0.88 a/60
1.33 p/60

You can see they are almost identical to what he's done in Boston without Pasta. He hasn't undergone some renaissance, he's just playing with a world class offensive winger.

Slow start but he isn't significantly underperforming anymore

Go look at the 2015 draft and tell me he isn't significantly underperforming. Consider some of the names of guys drafted behind him, like Rantanen, Meier, Werenski, Provorov, Barzal, Connor, Chabot, Konecny, JEE, Boeser, Aho, Hintz..... and that doesn't include late round successes like Kaprizov and Terry.

The below is scoring over the last 2 years and change..... He's 18th in PPG from that draft class despite having arguably the best linemate of the group. and this excludes 2 way & defensive defenseman like Hanifin, Andersson, Carlo, Cernak, Provorov, Marino, Gavrikov, Roy, and Siegenthaler who are all better overall players than Zacha.

Zacha wouldn't even be a first round pick in a re-draft. He'd be picked closer to 60th than 6th.

 

[JPT]

I don't think I should repeat my actual best takes, but my best allowed take continues to be that sports journalism is the worst kind of journalism in NA, which is really saying a lot about how bad it is.

 

[All Mod Cons]

After watching him a fair few times in the Q, I knew Zadina wouldn't make it.

 

[FerrisRox]

Before the Maple Leafs signed John Tavares, when there were heavy rumours they were interested, I said signing him would be a disastrous mistake for the team.

I said signing him would blow up their internal cap structure and lead to bloated and inflated contracts for Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews and would cripple the team in terms of being able to assemble a quality team around those pieces.

That's exactly what happened.

I also said, at this time, before Tavares was signed, that he didn't actually address a need on the team, because Nazem Kadri was already a solid second line centre for the team and acquiring Tavares would push him down in the lineup having a dual pronged negative effect, he would be two expensive to retain as a non-top six player and his lower place in the standing and limited PP time would lower his trade value.

That's exactly what happened, as well.

I said if Dubas proved to be dumb enough to sign Tavares as a free agent, he would be ruining the Maple Leafs best chance to actually compete for a Stanley Cup in my lifetime.

On the other side of the coin, the worst take I had here was in the summer of 2008 when Ossi Vaananen was signed by the Philadelphia Flyers, I declared this low-key signing "the best free agent signing of the summer. Not only was he not a great pick up for the Flyers, but the waived him and lost him to Vancouver before the season was done and it proved to be his final season in the league.

 

[Breakfast of Champs]

After watching him a fair few times in the Q, I knew Zadina wouldn't make it.

Agreed, the guy had an amazing shot but average everything else for the Q. That's not gonna cut it in the nhl.