Hamilton is not a stud defensively. C’mon. You’re lying to yourself. If you want to say that he’s so elite on the powerplay that you don’t care, you can say that.

At the end of the day, the fancy stats get you other fancy stats, and entitle people that don’t have an understanding of what to look for with a very strong opinion.

There’s a reason the dougie Hamilton types always lose. You can keep lauding him. Teams will keep dumping the puck in his corner, and winning possession, and your team will keep losing.

Yes, Dougie Hamilton will keep losing. Not the fault that his goaltenders have a combined .865 save percentage throughout his career, totally on Dougie. Just because you do not understand analytics does not make them useless. If you'd know what you're looking for in a D man, you couldn't find a better one than Dougie. You are lying to yourself if you're believing otherwise. You're really either missing something, or you have a swayed opinion against the guy. There's nothing wrong with Dougie's game, and the proof is that in the first season of his career not being a young kid, and having a capable goalie behind him, he made the 3rd round through a bloodbath of a division. You're lying to yourself and developing irrational feelings towards the man.

I don’t have any feelings towards the man. I don’t think d men that don’t win puck battles or play a lick of defense are really that impactful.

As for that third round, the canes beating the caps in 7 was pretty impressive! Then they beat the islanders which was, well, easier done than said. Then they played a real team and got embarrassed. It looked like they were from two different leagues. Dougie played a big part of that.

You clearly have disdain for him.

As for Carolina,just no. Carolina had both goalies injured in the previous series, they'd lost TvR and CdH with injuries, Svech was still concussed, Ferland was on his usual IR holiday. There's a lot of players you can blame, Dougie is not one of those. You can look back through that series, but Dougie is not at fault for it. He was probably the only reason we got past the caps, he just put Ovechkin away for 80 minutes in game 7, and against the Islanders he was great. I think you can blame Faulk for defensive lapses, you can also look at the fact the Canes had 75% of the Charlotte Checkers roster up, and see what happened. Dougie ain't it.

Carolina isn’t important enough to have disdain for. You kidding me? Montreal, sure. You guys are just an adorable little punching bag that do some fun things after games.

Adorable little punching bags? I'm sorry, how was game 7 of the finals when you were used as STL's little punching bags?

Pretty tough. I was there. But the bruins will be back. They’re in that situation frequently....because they’re not a punching bag. They’re an elite franchise. Don’t worry though champ. Once a decade or so you might have a playoff series win or two to cheer about.

We're literally in the playoffs. We've not been eliminated in the first round since 2001, we've never been eliminated in round 2.... you have more 1st round eliminations than cup finals appearences.... don't worry champ, it's an "eLiTe FrAnChIsE"

You haven’t had a single moment where you thought your team was going to win a cup since 2006. Don’t try to make it out like you think your team should be at the table. You’re a nice little team. Have fun down there.

I would like to point you to 2009 where we beat the Devils and... oh some bad team by the name of the Boston Bruins en route to an ECF, we beat the Reigning cup champs and Islanders to get back to the ECF, any time you're in the final 4, you have to think they have a shot at the cup. You better enjoy the next 2 years or so, cause after that, it's a sharp fall for the B's buddy, and then we'll see who's talking

Ooof. Ya, it’s going to be tough. I mean, the bruins do have the leagues leading goal scorer who’s 23, and their top 2 d men are 23 and 22, but ya, they might be done like dinner after next week!

Are you really bringing up 2009 to establish your relevance? C’mon man, your bringing everyone down. This is depressing.

Dude, you've got a player who doesn't know what defence is because of Bergeron, you've got two young D men who are top 4 quality, fair. But who's replacing Tuukka? Who's replacing Bergeron? Who's replacing Chara? Who's replacing Marchand? You don't seem to get that all of Boston's BIG pieces are going to be gone briefly. And another word on Pastrnak, he wasn't the league's leading scorer.... Ovechkin had 548, Pasta 47..... also Pasta has never scored at this rate, has an inredibly high PDO and it's looking very unsustainable.... so yes, they're going to collapse right back to the bottom where they belong.

I'm not trying to bring up 2009 for our relavence, I'm just pointing out you said we only make the playoffs ever decade or so, and it's just wrong bud. I'ma point out when you're wrong, don't worry about that.

I don’t know what PDO is, but Pastrnak has scored at somewhat similar rates. 38 in 65ish games last year. It’s a far cry from 48 in 70 but its not an insane difference. Your big gap in knowledge comes on the defensive side of the puck. Pasta has always been pretty good defensively. He’s never going to win any selkes, but for an elite scoring winger, it’s about as good as you’re ever going to get.

Chara’s replacement in terms of a shut down D is already on the team.

Who’s going to replace Tuukka? Um. Tuukka. I’ll worry about 2025 when it’s 2025.

Who’s going to replace Marchand? Doesn’t really seem like he’s slowing down to be honest.

Anyway, the Bruins will be fine. They’re the bruins! The good news for you is that I think it will be at least 3-5 years before there’s another discussion about moving the franchise.

I’m actually thinking about taking some vacation time in the winters and spending a couple months on the outer banks, i might just buy season tickets to the canes. What should i be expecting? Like 200 bucks?

Ohhh, I got it. You don't understand analytics, which is why you dismiss them, got it.

No one is replacing Chara right now... that ability is not going to be fixed with anyone on the blueline right now.

Marchand's scoring is up, but his defence is down, increased xGA over the last 3 years, he's committing to his scoring because his defence has gotten worse. All it's gonna take is one hit on Marchand like the Subban hit, where he gets really banged up, and Marchand could lose it. The way Marchand is playing is incredibly fragile. It really does speak to how talented he is that he's able to do it, the rat.

Tuukkaa has gotten worse in each of the past, what 4 season? He's slowing down, you wanna keep starting him? It'll be a rebound to the days of mediocrity. You know before 2011 when it had been 40 years without a cup win?

I don't know if you're forgetful or didn't pay attention, but one of the major issues Carolina weren't drawing is because tickets were super expensive. A season ticket will cost you nearly $1500, and that's down from what it used to be (depending on seats) so feel free to keep sh*t talking, but... you're just proving that you're not exactly the most intelligent of people.

I’ll jsut watch the games thanks.

If you think you can reduce everything to numbers, that’s good for you, and i respect your right to think that way.

My question is, why bother watching?

Because I love hockey, as does everyone on this website. I could ask you why you watch if you don't pay attention to the numbers? You pay attention to some but not all? Why pick and choose? Why use goals and points as stats but not EV_xGAA?