Teravainen had 53 pts just last year, how is he a steep drop off as a #4 forward? Kurashev, Dickinson and Athanasiou are all good 2nd or 3rd line tweeners too. Their offense is good, if unspectacular. Depending on how ready kids like Levshunov, Moore, Del Mastro, Nazar and Dach are they could add a decent amount of depth. They're moving forward into their competitive window, it's hard to hate on them.
I mean, it's only July 2. They have a ton of capspace and there are a bunch of RFA teams will try to fit. Same applies for Montreal.
Curious, why is July 2nd being thought of as end of offseason ?
I think it's OK to mediocre and their defence and goaltending is still bad. Brodie is pretty cooked and old Martinez isn't enough to make a huge difference there IMO. Teravainen is fine and I like him, but I say it drops off afterward because they probably can only put together one good line. I'll fully agree that Bedard, Hall, Bertuzzi, Teravainen is 4 good forwards though. Not really a fan of Athanasiou personally. He's fine for a rebuilding team but I don't think he's much of a net positive player. Kurashev is alright, Dickinson is a fine 2C for a rebuilder but I don't think he's anything great either.
I'm not hating on them. I mostly like what they've done so far this offseason by adding flippable vets and getting paid to take Mikheyev so they can ice an actual NHL roster while continuing to stockpile even as they signal the end of the tank phase. I just don't think what they added gets them anywhere close to the playoff bubble.
Still Barron and Xhekaj to re-sign and Guhle to extends (that one might be pushed to next year according to Hughes if nothing advance).
They have a comparable roster to Minny and better than Arizona and STL now, they will finish higher than them. I expect about a 11th place finish in the west. That's a massive improvement and builds momentum.
Sometimes not doing anything is the right path. If they did something it might take you out of the lottery position for next season and the draft next year is supposed to be super deep with high end talent.
Oh that too, also maybe an assistant for MSL to replace Burrows.
Cant wait to not make the POs for the 7th year in the last ten years. Exciting stuff.Sometimes not doing anything is the right path. If they did something it might take you out of the lottery position for next season and the draft next year is supposed to be super deep with high end talent.
Plus, you kind of want all your young guys to develop at the same time. Habs wont make the playoffs this year and will be poised for another great selection. Demidov is your Marner, but without the choke part.
It's not Hughes's fault that we were unable to be a consistent playoff team before he was hired. Also, the best case with overpaying for the UFAs in this class would be to rank in the same spots as where we drafted CC/Guhle. So that's still not making the POs and we have more expensive contracts handed out to declining players when we can't even get out of the contracts we have right now. You can't say you want progression then only count PO appearances because that invalidates your argument.
There's plenty of teams that added without overpaying. This is not honest debating and assumes our precious HuGo isn't some awesome GM that can make shrewd moves. There was plenty of talent that was up for grab to adress the bottom 9.
Burrows was not fired and left to be with his family. They said as such in their communique.
I never claimed it he was an awesome GM, but the crying that we couldn't sign the Toffolis/Monahans to help us go from bottom 5 to bottom 12 (which according to you would still be a failure since it's not making the playoffs) makes no sense. I already mentioned it was a fail not to sign a physical 4th liner that can PK. There's pretty much no excuse not to sign Carrick by paying him more than what he got with the Rangers.
I never cried that they didn't sign Monahan or Toffoli. I don't think the top 6 needs additions. It's the bottom 6 that annoys me. Like I said, there's been many players signed to decent contracts that could've helped a lot in the bottom 6 but we chose to go with Pezzeta/anderson/Gallagher/armia/dvorak again. There's at the very least two spots there for players.
No way IMO. Schmaltz, Hayton, Keller, Crouse, Cooley, Maccelli, Bjugstad, Kerfoot, Doan, McBain, Guenther and the new look defence built around Sergachev, Marino, and Durzi is easily ahead of Chicago's and if we're penciling in Chicago's prospect pool then we also have to consider if Lamoureux or Iginla might make an impact, or if Cooley/Guenther might take a huge step forward this year to. Utah has better goaltending as well, and still has 15M in cap space so I doubt they're finished yet. As for STL I don't really love their roster but each of Thomas, Buchenevich, and Kyrou would be by far the 2nd best forward for Chicago and they have better depth everywhere (and again they have better goaltending).
I guess we'll see. I don't think they're even better than the 23-24 Coyotes. Again they need to make up 90 net goals to even reach 23-24 Arizona's goal differential. They'll need to have some young guys other than Bedard take huge steps because otherwise most of their offseason is adding rough equivalents to the vets that all the other bottom half of the league teams other than San Jose already had on their rosters.
I gotta admit I'm not really sure why you're so jealous of Chicago essentially just adding their own versions of the guys we already have or recently had. They got their own equivalents to guys like Monahan, Toffoli, Gallagher, Dvorak, Dadonov, Hoffman, Pearson, Armia, Savard, and Edmundson. It makes sense for them in their situation, but we should know as well as anyone that having a lineup full of OK mediocre NHLers and a couple promising 21 year olds doesn't generate an immediate huge jump in the standings. It's still a good offseason for them but we didn't need to sign all those guys because we already have our own mediocre veterans in place.
You mention Terevainen/Bertuzzi but they wouldn't sign here to play bottom 6. I agree we should have signed a 4th liner, but that's not going to make or break between being a bottom 2 team according to you and sizeable progression.
He's going to Laval.
It's funny having a whole two seasons of people saying we are playing way above our weight class and keeping so many games close which will cost the tank, but now all of a sudden we are guaranteed to get pumped every game with the same team. The bump from a bottom 5 team to a team competing for the wild card will come from natural progression from our young top guys, not by adding bottom 6 forwards.
Your second to last paragraph tells me you pretty much agree with my premise, but you ignore the dozen of great signings theres been in the league in the last two days. Carrick, Girgensons, Walker, Trenin, etc.
Lol wut?
Every team got better and we didn't, hwo do you figure we dont get dunked on?
Yes, especially a guy say like Trenin, young, cheap and good.
