Ikr. I’d never thought I’d ever take pity on a team I hated soooo much

So Vegas is holding back trading for Eichel because they dont want to give up Krebs

After watching Krebs in 3 separate games here's my advice

Trade him in a package to Buffalo for Eichel

just do it already tbh

90.5 xGF% for Liljegren on Saturday night.

93.6 xGF% through two periods tonight.

Do not ever take him out of the lineup

Honestly Dermott and Holl should rotate as Rielly-Dermott is not a great pairing. Kind of like what tampa did with Rutta and Bogosian Toronto should just rotate those 2 on the third pairing and let Lilgren play with Muzzin

I probably should

And yes I do.

Well considering Dermott left about 1min into the 2nd and didn’t return till the end of the period, Liljegren and Rielly looked great. I’d keep:
Rielly Liljegren
Muzzin Brodie
Sandin Dermott

Stop ruining your brain cells and go to sleep.

Hey I have absolutely nothing against talking about all things hockey, I’m always down to chat about literally any aspect of the game. It’s more just the spam that’s an issue, like you don’t have to respond to every post, or if someone responds to a question you can just like the post, writing another post to thank them isn’t always necessary, and you can quote multiple posts if you just have short responses instead of posting 3 or 4 times in a row, that kinda stuff. You’ll get more used to it the longer you’re on here I think, it seems like you love hockey just as much as the rest of us, but yeah keeping the posts to relevant stuff helps more people see the good stuff and leads to better conversations (i.e. if someone comes back to see they’ve missed 5 pages they might not bother reading all the posts, but might be willing to catch up on one page of good content, and then contribute to the discussions).


The fact that Vegas refuses to trade Krebs for Eichel makes no sense. Like I can understand Anaheim not wanting to give up Zegras or Drysdale, or Ottawa not wanting to give up Stutzle, but Krebs is NOT in that same tier of prospect. Like, not even close. I would have traded some combination of Krebs, Hague, a 1st, and two of the 5mil wingers (for cap reasons, likely Dadonov+Smith or something) for Eichel at the drop of a hat tbh. But I don’t want Vegas to trade for him because I want Calgary to trade for him lol

My sleeping schedule is f*cked. I'm like at my most vivacious at this time of night. I've always been a night owl.

Warning: massive Bettman take incoming. Started this when we were discussing it earlier and then took a nap lol


He’s definitely raised income, so the owners like him, but part of me wonders if that might be overblown a bit (i.e. anyone else coulda seen similar growth over the last 25 years).

He’s expanded the league a lot, but almost never admits failures with this. Arizona had to be owned by the league for Christ’s sake, and has always struggled with poor attendance, being bad on the ice, and having all sorts of off ice controversies (illegally testing prospects, late on bonus payments, losing their arena because they don’t own it and are getting kicked out, Mitch Miller, etc.). L franchise, L ownership, L management, L league for not relocating it. He literally has an investor that actively wants hockey in Houston, who has an acceptable arena to play in, that’s such a gimme. Quebec has an arena, not sure if they’ve got an investor or potential ownership group, but refusing to put a team in a market where it will clearly be successful just seems silly. It won’t grow the game to a non-traditional audience but it would again be an easy success story, likely a profitable team, and there’s an inherent marketable rivalry with one of the biggest teams in the sport. Seems like a no-brainer. Arizona isn’t the only case either, Florida’s been terrible forever and they’re still only 26th in average attendance this year despite being legitimately excellent for the first time in decades (last time they were good was when they literally found success by grabbing opposing teams to death in the dead puck era). Most recent expansion teams (pre-VGK/SEA) are low value franchises. Wild are only slightly below average, Blue Jackets are 30th in value, Thrashers relocated, Predators are 26th, Florida is 31st, Anaheim is 25th, Ottawa is 29th, Tampa is only slightly below average, and San Jose is 24th, rounding out every expansion since the 90s started (don’t remember exactly when Bettman joined but I think it was like 1993 right? So if he wasn’t responsible for the expansion, he was responsible for guiding the formative years). If you look at that, all but 2 of those 9 are bottom 9 in franchise value, along with the dreadful failure that is the Coyotes, and the tire fire that is Buffalo, which leads me to my next point.

Bettman doesn’t step in when there are clear ownership/management issues (unless it’s to keep his beloved Coyotes burning money in the desert). He didn’t step in to help Ottawa when Melnyk was actively trying to destroy his own team. He hasn’t stepped in to sort out the mess that is the Sabres organization. I’m not really sure what he’s supposed to be doing if these aren’t the times when he should be stepping in to resolve problems. Like is he literally just a marketing director who causes a lockout every decade or is he supposed to help his teams?

He’s not for the players at all, and I think that’s absolutely unforgivable. Like you can be for the owners in negotiations but at the end of the day this league is nothing without the talent and they need to do more to support them (you could also argue this is the NHLPA’s job and I would reply with “is it really?” because there’s no way to tell given that organization’s ineptitude and irrelevancy as well). Bettman’s caused 3 lockouts amounting to two full seasons missed, which is lost revenue, lost attention, lost advertising rights, etc. equalling hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars down the drain. As well as pissed off fans. He’s also allowed one of his most marketable stars, a bona fide superstar 1C and arguably top 10 player in the league when healthy (definitely top 8 centre), as well as being a top 3 best active American player, to simply sit at home injured and not playing. I’m disappointed the league didn’t try to mediate any solution there until Pat Brisson is essentially forcing them every step of the way (we’ll see if they do anything), you just can’t have a star of that calibre miss this much time when it’s entirely avoidable. He also still (to my knowledge) refuses to admit any connection between head trauma and CTE, which should have happened a decade ago when Belak, Boogard, and Probert all passed away, and is always slow to implement any sort of rule change like this that would protect players.

Speaking of not changing anything, the playoffs need to be expanded. 16 teams made the playoffs when there were only 21 teams in the 80s, meaning nearly 80% of the league made the playoffs. That may be a little high, but now 16 is 50% of the league which is much too low. It’s simply bad business to have half of your fans check out with 2 months to go. You could up it to 20 by having 7-10 from each division play a wild card tournament sorta thing, keep fans of those teams around for a week at least, make some extra revenue, and have more games that matter, while also buying a few days to allow contenders to rest up, recover from injuries bringing stars back into the fold that otherwise may have missed a round of playoffs, and prepare them to put on a show. Could also expand to 12 teams making the playoffs per conference and having the first round be top 4 get a bye, next 8 play a 3 game series before jumping into the normal 4 rounds. Idk I’m not the commissioner but it would be nice if there was any thought at all, let alone any thinking outside the box.

And then like I mentioned, I don’t think there has been much, if any, attempt to grow hockey as a whole. I know he wants to expand into new markets like China, but the result of that wish is having a couple preseason games there. That’s not how you build a lifelong fan, or grow the future of the game, that’s just how you maybe make a quick buck now. You need to invest in youth, and lower the barrier to entry for people to play the sport.

Also he’s the head of officiating iirc, and obviously the officiating sucks and he doesn’t really try anything to fix it, but I feel like that will always suck. And the TV rights deals seem shortsighted. I may be a little off here, but I’m pretty sure the NBC deal burned the NHL, as they were committed to one place for below market value. I know they’ve sold two rights packages now, but I still feel like committing for 7 years isn’t great, like if you grow the game properly won’t the rights be worth significantly more by 2025? Idk maybe this isn’t an issue, but I’m not sure why they give so much term to the TV rights holders. Like in 2014 the NBA signed a 9 year, $24 billion rights deal, and the next one is projected to be worth triple that. Surely they’d have made more money if they gave out a 5 year deal. Idk

And he’s had extremely poor responses to major issues, from the mishandling of Aldrich’s sexual offenses to the pathetic BLM response and the failure of the Hockey Is For Everyone campaign to have any sort of impact. At the end of the day he’s been on the job for like 25+ years, which imo is far too long for anyone to hold a job for, things are getting stale. It’s past time for some new blood. Preferably someone who is less of a prick, but at the very least they should be able to address the issues I’ve mentioned here, grow the game PROPERLY rather than just slapping franchises everywhere and calling it a day, enacting policies and plans for inclusion that will actually get completed and followed, and maybe bring a little excitement to the game.

Its like they are scared another Suzuki situation will happen. But why worry as I dont think Krebs will be better than a healthy Eichel anytime soon. Their goal is win now and not wait for Krebs to develop time. Thats what Buffalo will be good for.

Yeah and like, of course Suzuki has turned out to be pretty good, but it’s not like they even really lost the trade necessarily. Pacioretty has been great for them and they’ve made 2 conference finals with him, which is farther than many teams make it. It was a win now move that caused them to have immediate success in exchange for sacrificing long term potential, and is one of the rare trades that both sides should feel good about. I’ve always thought it’s kinda silly that we seem to have this notion that unless the team wins the cup with the short term piece then they lose the trade (unless the prospect full on busts), because there are other ways of being successful, and finishing in the final 4 twice is pretty good. But yeah, Krebs will never come close to Eichel, and Vegas has desperately needed a 1C for their entire existence.

These Benn and Hintz goals have been hilarious. There's been like no defense.

Well it seems Hintz will lose that goal as it seems offside.

Can they start producing please, I have them in one of my fantasy leagues and they’ve done nothing lol. At least Toews has finally woken up but Benn and Hintz are putting me in a real awkward position where at their peak they’re better than the free agents, but right now the free agents are vastly outproducing them. Also I need Pettersson to do literally anything why isn’t more being made of how slow he’s started, AGAIN.

Until Bowness is gone, nothing will change. Stars play relies strictly on lucky bounces, players strongly overperforming and ok-ish defensive play.

Bowness has been a NHL head coach since 1989 and still he doesn't know how to make an offensive play work. It sucks.

Lol, DeFeNsE wInS cHamPiOnShIpS tHoUgH

Now to be fair you're guaranteed to not lose if your opponent doesn't score. But you also need to outscore the opponent. And unfortunately if Luke Glendening is the best of both worlds in your roster the only thing you're going to win in the long-term is the draft lottery.

Can i get a resume of this essay ? Joking aside, i do agree with most of the arguments

So Drouin got injured so he can get added to the list of players who have gotten an injury/missed games due to other reasons, I mean the list already contain Price, Hoffman, Niku, Gallagher, Petry, Edmundson, Weber, Paquette, Caufield ( had an injury in training camp ), Perreault and that’s OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD so there’s probably more

Evans is also still dealing with an injury, and Byron is out as well.

So gonna lay down a funny prediction

2 years ago Vegas beats Toronto handing them their 5th loss that resulted in Babcock losing his Job

2 years later Toronto shutting out Vegas results in them trading for Eichel

If my prediction comes true I'm gonna be so happy lul.

Vegas getting shut out isn’t going to result in an Eichel trade, especially since he won’t be able to help them for many months, hopefully after Pacioretty, Karlsson, and Stone are back.

I knew i forgot some players

Can uh we get a uh injury virus check on the venues for the uh 2021 third round?