/u/bandofgypsies

  • 7 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle


  • First of all, I think lines are going to change a lot early in the season. But I’ll throw these out anyway…

    Razor - Larkin - ADB

    Fabbri - Compher - Perron

    Sprong - Copp - Berggren

    Fischer - Ras - Kostin

    Veleno/Kasper

    Seider - Walman

    Ghost - Holl

    Maatta - Chiarot

    Lindstrom/(Edvinsson)

    Husso

    Lyon/Reimer (pick 'em, but I’d rather run with Lyon)

    I could see several combinations of the first line. I don’t prefer Perron there but guessing Lalonde will give it a shot, too. Guessing the top 6 should end up modestly stable, though, since they’ll probably all spend a lot of time on the PP and we may want to come back with a tough line thereafter to combat a team fresh off a kill. Likewise for Copp/Fischer/Ras/Kostin on the PK, though, we may get some Larkin time there, too, situationally. I really liked how we we deploying regular linemates on the PK a bit last year (larks/razor, e.g.), but it didn’t stick. While it worked for chemistry, surely we’d rather save guys like that for ES and PP time.

    Defensively could be hard to say. A chiarot-Holl pair gives me some pause, but I really like the idea of Ghost and Maatta, so hopefully we get to see that at points. But we got a lot of Maatta-Chiarot to close out last year so guessing we see a bit more of it. Seider-Walman seems like it’s theirs to lose and only may get disrupted depending on how the PP plays out, since seider, Walman, Ghost all likely spending some time there.











  • I’m with you. Honestly, though, anything between roughly 7th and 14th is more or less interchangeable. You’re likely talking about teams that are only a few wings away from playoff contention, at least for a portion of the year. With variability being from a number of random uncontrollable factors. Of course not all teams in that range are created equal, but my point was mostly that I don’t want us to end up that low again. It likely would mean we were 1) bad but not terrible, 2) still likely not an actual playoff contender and 3) not a lottery winner. It suggests a pretty rough middling position for us at this juncture.

    Sucks not winning the lottery in a cap era rebuild.





  • Yeah this is critical. These promises for money later mean that all sorts of stupid ideas were being funded, and therefore people hired, etc, but now that’s coming to a close. Companies and investors will be more likely to scrutinize spending (as they should) and see how to rightsize with reality and line of sight to profit. For significantly more complex reasons, it’s similar to an individual borrowing themselves into crazy debt, and banks eventually determining that they need more than credit/promises to keep seeding you cash.

    Time to pay back some promises.


    • One thing we can’t forget is that this off-season’s FA crop was/is quite maligned. Everyone’s been dogging it for months so we shouldn’t now somehow expect to get dramatically better from it.

    • I don’t mind the Holl deal at all. It’s not a crazy amount of term or money and he’s going to be quite serviceable. I also like that we can reduce some of the time that seider plays on the PK, bc while he’s write capable it’s also just hard minutes to play and there’s injury risk given how winning he is to block a shot. Hell still play but Holl will eat time there.

    • I think Compher will be fine. It does feel like his deal is about 1x1m too large but I also think that’s just what happens when you need to go to the market to fill gaps.

    • not discussed much yet it’s that this is really our first chance to build some things with lalonde after him having a year under his belt and being able to evaluate some of our players (and us having another year with them). Zadina… we’ll see…it’s been ~4 years of still not quite all coming together. JFV has NHL level ability but has a long way to go to guarantee himself a nightly roster spot at C; he also doesn’t have a contract yet.

    At the end of the day, we have no choice but to replace Suter, erne, sundqvist, vrana, and Bert. Plus some AHL plugs. I think the signings and picks also show that the team isn’t that sold on veleno long term. This off-season wasn’t the one to change the trajectory of the team with moves. MAYBE getting debrincat would help that a bit, but it’s no guarantee and clearly we’re not the only ones with challenges getting alignment with him on contract terms. This is just the difficulty we face when not winning the lottery…elite talent isn’t just available to take.

    Finally, I think we’re also locking up a couple of middle/depth pieces in Compher and Holl before the cap jumps slot next year and the spending increases. I’m not sure I love spending 8.5M on them combined annually, but it’s really not that terrible. Again, the primary pause I have here is the term on Compher, but good luck picking up anyone to play top/middle 6 roles for less in FA. As much as I liked Suter, Compher is inarguably a better offensive option.

    Hopefully berggren can take that next step for us and Ras returns with the form he had pre-injury. Maybe next year we go for big offense in FA.


  • Yeah I’m with you. Core reddit has been a disaster for a long time. I happily left a long time ago and eventually came back as 3rd party apps allowed me to have s completely different experience on mobile and I could finally stop using desktop (though res always lively fondly in my heart).

    I’m moving away from Reddit for a least a while too see how things begin to unfold. Will try Lemmy, too, and see if it grows enough to be worthwhile and have the momentary to build some sort of critical mass offer time. Seeing some major said move here (Boost, for me) will be awesome.

    But I don’t expect reddit to disappear. As was said, for a ton of people, the 3rd party so exodus is not impactful, if they’re even aware of it.

    I’d guess Reddit continues for a long time, but becomes even more diluted than it has since the tencent investments and the huge leave-facebook migration from a few years ago.