Hockey Thread

Seems valid.

I'm weirdly not too upset. We all knew this would be an experimental year. The team has a new coach. They are trying to learn a new system of play. A ridiculous number of the players are under age 25.

Sure, it'd be better if they could win a game. Any game? Guys? But, I don't feel existential dread about the team anymore. Plus, it is Arizona and we are used to our teams losing.

This season is officially Year 2 of the rebuild. We'll see how it goes.

PS. Clayton Keller has been terrific! So, at least there's something.

It is factually correct that Dustin Brown and Sidney Crosby have the same amount of points.

My friends and I have started a Twitter poll asking people what they think will happen if the Coyotes end October with a record of 0-11-1.

So far "Trade a player" seems to be the popular answer. "Fire Rick Tocchet" is coming in 2nd place.

So Griffin Reinhart just got waived/demoted to the A after Edmonton let him go to Vegas.

Just a couple years after the Flames got Dougie Hamilton for essentially the same price Edmonton paid for Reinhart a bit later. Delightful.

Tell me again how those trades were more or less the same Edmonton fans who were on me for making fun of the deal at the time. It was a terrible comparison then, now it's just hilarious... though to be fair that was the draft year where Boston absolutely lost their minds. I'm not a Calgary resident Flames fan so I don't have the extra inter provincial rivalry thing going for the Oilers but it's still funny to see them being inept.

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In the same circle of things I found the various thinkpieces about the Toronto/Edmonton rebuilds hilarious last year. A couple of them kept remarking on Edmonton's slow and patient model finally paying off.

No it didn't, they just kept having ridiculous lottery luck and finally got a pick they couldn't fuck up for a generational talent. None of those earlier picks are paying off other than Draisaitl (who arguably has yet to prove anything much.)

Since their cup run their first round picks have been:
2006 - No first rounder, first pick Jeff Petry at 45.

2007 - Sam Gagner (Arguably not a terrible player but they rushed him so hard and kind of blew him. The first of three first round picks no less. Logan Couture taken 3 picks later as someone who's played a much better Centre career)

2007 - Alex Plante (Who? Career NHL games 10, now plays in Asia. They needed D though and this wasn't a particularly great year for D depth, though P.K. Subban went at 43.)

2007 - Riley Nash (Drafted 21st overall, eventually traded for the 46th pick a couple years later before playing a game with the team. Not a terrible pick, but Max Pacioretty went next to the Habs)

2008 - Jordan Eberle (While not terrible has never lived up to his potential, can't really blame the Oilers for this one though, I think we all thought he'd be better than he is. Nobody screams out what a blunder in the next ten picks or so for not being taken though.)

2009 - Magnus Paajarvi (Swing and a miss, pretty sure his rookie year was his only full NHL season and that was with the Oilers in full rebuild mode. I'd forgotten just how awful that year was after the top 10 though.)

2010 - Taylor Hall (Hall is a good player, maybe even great, but even at the time most people thought they Oilers needed a Centre more and that Seguin would better suit where they were at that time and what they needed for the future. Not actually that dissimilar from the Auston Matthews vs. Laine debate last year that even if the winger might score a few more goals long term, unless you've got Sid Crosby anchoring your first line a can't miss franchise centre is the smart pick. With hindsight it seems even more obvious that they made the wrong choice here, especially as there were rumours that some sort of trade could have been made. Making things worse is that he was eventually traded for a player they could have definitely done better than if things were done more artfully. Instead they waited on their centre until...)

2011 - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (We kept hearing non stop hype about how this guy was going to solve all their Centre woes and anchor the top line for years. He's seemingly now their 3rd line center. Again he's not bad but certainly with hindsight never should have been first overall. Other Centres taken that year in the top 10, Huberdeau, Zibanejad, Ryan Strome, Scheifele (though the jets reached for someone no one else seemed to think much of there and hit gold thanks to Ducky), and Couturier. They also could have had future Hall trade bait Adam Larsson or Gabe Landeskog)

2011 - Oscar Klefbom (Here's a solid pick though he's taken time, like many d-men, to round into form.

2012 - Nail Yakupov (whifffffff, The 2012 draft was ridiculously stacked with Defence and this AGAIN first overall pick is especially damaging to the patient rebuild theory as they DESPERATELY needed defence and by any measure should have taken one of the reported MANY trade offers for first overall to trade down and taken one of: Ryan Murray, Griffin Reinhart (see above but was considered a great prospect at the time), Morgan 'my name is spelled wrong' Rielly, Hampus Lindholm, Matt Dumba, Jacob Trouba or Cody Ceci all of whom went in the top 15 plus whatever else they could fleece from the trade partner. Other fun fact, their 2nd round pick doesn't even have a wikipedia page which takes some doing in the past decade.)

2013 - Darnell Nurse (I forget which version of the rebuild we're on at this point but my best oiler fan friend would probably say 2.5. This one definitely wasn't a bad pick as he's slowly grown into being a reliable D-man this year but had they made the obvious trade the year before they could have grabbed someone like Bo Horvat, Max Domi or Alexander Wennberg

2014 - Leon Draisaitl (This was a weak D draft and honestly a pretty bad draft overall. The Oilers did pretty well with this pick even Draisaitl retreats from last year's scoring. Highlights of those taken later in the first round are probably Sam Bennett, Nik Ehlers, Dylan Larkin and (with hindsight probably who they should have taken had they known they'd get McDavid) Pastrnak.

2015 - The all holy McJesus. The fourth 1st overall pick in Arguably the real beginning of their current rebuild as every move since has been about giving him anything he wants or needs. Edm did not have another pick in the top 3 rounds that year.

2016 - Jesse Puljujarvi. Holy shit a year where they didn't win the lottery! (See Jets, Winnipeg for this installment of horseshoes.) Seemingly the consensus #3 pick before Columbus grabbed Pierre-Luc Dubois leaving him to drop to 4. Current rumours in Edmonton seem to indicate that they've soured on him a bit as he's definitely still not nhl ready and doesn't seem particularly close. Has seemingly been passed by the 2017 first round pick Kailer Yamamoto who was taken 18 spots later.At the time this was definitely seen as a smart pick but I'm sure glad they didn't take Matt Tkachuk who went at #6 and was instantly a force as a rookie, Clayton Keller #7 who has been tearing it up this year or Sergachev at #9 who seems like one hell of a defenseman. To be fair you can't really judge this pick yet though.





And err... wow can you tell I was bored at work this afternoon?

If y'all win again tonight there's an outside chance that it'll cost Bill Peters his job, so maybe getting another coach fired is something else to look forward to I guess?  I'm pretty sure that happened twice to opposing coaches last season after Canes wins.

I'd just like to point out that Jaccob Slavin wasn't taken until the fourth round in 2012, and is better than all those guys you mentioned.  Which is nice for Carolina, since Jaccob Slavin is basically one of the three not-terrible players on the team at this point (the other two players being Jeff Skinner and Justin Williams).

Congrats Desert Dweller!  

I'm not surprised.  The Canes are three seasons away from having the longest playoff drought in NHL history.  Before this season I thought there was a 50/50 chance they'd end it this year; after this game I'd say there's a better than 50% chance the drought breaks the league record.

Also, Clayton Keller is very good.

Raanta and Darling both played a good game, and I'm certainly glad Raanta wasn't hurt there in overtime.  Hopefully they'll both make the transition into solid starting goalies in the long run as well.

I mean, he's had two very good seasons and looks to be set for a great career as a top-pairing defenseman but fair enough.  And I think Noah Hanifin is a guy who's far more likely to be traded in a deal for an actual non-Jeff Skinner top-six forward (which is also questionable, because, while he's mediocre defensively at this point, he's also still just 20).

Au revoir, Matt Duchene... It's a damn shame it never really came together. Kid comes in idolizing the Avs since childhood and is then subjected to the various stupidities of a Kroenke-owned franchise. Joe Sacco. The Cowardly Coach Patrick Roy. Last year's wasted season. Joe Sakic's comic ineptitude as a GM (though that is one hell of a larger bounty than I thought he'd have gotten for Matt at this very late hour). I hope he finds success in Ottawa. We all wanted him to be the hero of a franchise he once loved here. Can't blame him for what happened.

Wow, just read up on that deal for Duchene. Yeah, that is pretty ridiculous. When he first came up, I really thought he was going to be one of the centerpiece players for the Avs. Kinda sad that it never seemed to work.

Does definitely seem like a nice upgrade for Nashville.

The Coyotes are pretty bad, but I trust their GM a lot more than I trust Sakic. I'm not sure he's going to last the season.

Well Hammond doesn't really count as he's been on waivers a couple times I think? Condon is firmly their backup now.  Absolutely though.

I mean Duchene got a raw deal in Co but jeez if he doesn't immediately get back on track things won't get much better for him.

Also, as we are going to be playing Ottawa twice on the other side of the world in Sweden, keep in mind that he's going to score a minimum 35 goals in those games and get about seventy assists on us. Ex-Avs LOVE dunking on the old team when they are finally freed of this misery traded or sign elsewhere.

Even better was how he was snuck off the ice behind an injured player heading to the dressing room.