L E T S

F U C K I N G

G O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

When VGK goes out early they often go crazy the following year

Expect Marner to VGK now lul

That is the most Vegas in the the history of Vegas I’ve ever seen

The sport has been saved…. For now

Breaking News: Vegas Golden Knights placed on LT1R (Lost The 1st Round). Expected to make a recovery for October

For me, it’s Demidov if not Celebrini or bust with SJ.

I’m also all in on the Zeev Buium and Parekh sweepstakes.

They just want all the big toyz and with a R1 loss now after going almost all in and with TOR looking for change I could see something

Maybe not but its not out of the realm of VGK

Stars in 6

At this point, my favorites to win it are Florida, Carolina and whoever wins the DAL/COL. The Rags have the goods, but - today's win notwithstanding - I'm always super wary of teams that have it too easy in the 1st round, sit a week and the have to face a serious contender in the 2nd.

Carolina also had a weak opponent round 1. In all honesty, I think the finals will be Florida - winner of DAL/COL.

Carolina's weak opponent put up a bit more fight, though. And they sat two days less.

But I think I mostly agree with your second sentence. I think Carolina can take Florida. It would be abouy a 50-50 for me, assuming nobody is missing a major piece. That's another reason why it's so hard to predict the playoffs. Winners usually stay healthy somehow. The Blues, for once in their wretched playoff history, actually stayed healthy when they finally won a Cup.

Making excuses for the losing teams:

Nashville: no excuses, they crapped the bed. went into the playoffs as possibly the best 1-goal team, proceeded to absolutely suck at 1 goal scenarios, cost them the series. They never looked rattled tho - just remember the back to back goals for the canucks in g1, other come from behind moments, third period goals from Vancouver where Nashville didn’t get the save they needed.

Jets: no excuses, they crapped the bed. went into the playoffs as the best defensive team, performed as the worst defensive team. Also the avs were just more aggressive. Baffling. Absolutely exposed somehow, I didn’t give the attention to understand, but just recall so many times guys like miles wood or Nuchushkin won battles super clean from effort. Gonna sound mean, but maybe Drouin being out helped this series, he’s the type of guy a tall defense smothers. His absence made the forward group bigger.

Lightning: bob > vasi. But got what deserved. I was hoping vasi would pull off a steal.

Leafs: legit excuse - top heavy team meets injuries. Imagine edm kings with McDavid and Kane out half, not 100% other half. Sucks but at least there wasn’t a giant rental expense. One of the ingredients of a cup run is health, and Toronto forgot to mix that in. Toronto running the gamut of excuses for this current cores playoff history: from kinda over the top suspensions to officiating, now health - honestly they’re legit excuses, but when you string them together it’s kinda hard to swallow cause we’re all like “no excuses” except there really are excuses so…

Islanders: got what deserved, better team won.

Capitals: got what deserved, better team won.

Knights: no excuses, but Dallas is just super stacked, got what they deserved. Hard to just say Dallas is better, but their roster has a unique variety of young and old that allows them to have the best icetime distribution among all teams - both of which benefit in early rounds, perhaps struggle as the tournament continues, perhaps not. Perhaps the knights making quite a few substantial changes backfired - not enough time to cram enough practice in.

Kings: got what deserved, better team won.

I went 7-1 in round 1 (only wrong prediction was Winnipeg over Colorado) so these are my round 2 predictions, let's see if my great pace can continue

Florida in 6 (sticking with my start of playoff prediction)
Carolina in 6 (sticking with my start of playoff prediction)
Colorado in 7
Oilers in 5

Nice results!

Mine were so bad I’ve banned myself from making predictions for 3 months.

Kind of, I did go 7-1 but I had the Jets winning the cup so my brackets dead even if I'm 7-1

Can you do the Toronto side of it please?




Leafs felt he was targeted, so maybe they came to that conclusion based on him getting hurt?

I’m the opposite lol, I went 4-4 (terrible lol), but my bracket is still redeemable with both my cup finalists still there

- That's like saying if McDavid and Draisaitl were not healthy and in and out but more importantly

- If they didn't play so bad in G1, G3 and G4... They would have won the series... No excuses

I went 6-2 lol... The 2 series I got wrong are playing each other lol (Oilers, Nucks)

https://www.capfriendly.com/armchair-gm/team/5104173

Rumours are he wants to go.

Friedman speculated on if Seth Jones would be willing to go to Toronto on the podcast today so get ready for a flood of Marner for Jones centered ACGMs this summer

If I were on the leafs board I would vote to give it one more go.

Worry about Marner/Tavares in 12 months. If one of those 2 approached and wanted out, would facilitate, otherwise, no.

With Utah’s existence; added buying pressure of available on ice talent as well as numerous teams looking for coaches, it is a bad offseason to voluntarily become a buyer of both. Everything is locked up, can focus on building a better team. Can deal with the headaches in a future friendlier environment. Maybe take a shot at a coach if there’s one guy that really moves the needle but if I didn’t get my guy I wouldn’t dump what I have for second best.

I feel rn they have 2 plans

1. Ask either if they would be willing to waive

If yes then they make a move

If no on to plan B

2. Same **** build around them and see

Yeah the coaching decision is the front and center (another HC let go before extension?)

Player wise there really is just a few things that can do to improve the team vs "change for change's sake".

Pick 1 UFA: Max Domi or Tyler Bertuzzi
#1 RD in Free Agency
Goalie (1A or 1B) in Free Agency

Beyond that it is coaching/execution/systems and the role of the youth movement: Knies, Quillan, Minten, Cowan, Grebyonkin, Niemela, Hildeby getting any meaningful roles in 2024-25.

Predicting/expecting anything major beyond that requires 2 or 3 "steps" to come together that are impossible to determine today at this stage