NHL offseason thread

That's awesome.

 

TSN must love seeing their biggest property napalmed. Some guys I know in junior hockey wonder if various Hockey Canada events will even take place after the government froze their funding.

 

Local media confirms Elliotte's story. All coaches gone except Ricci and Nabokov. Prepping to write off another season here.

 

As someone who was raised on NCAA hockey and whose career has been largely guided by it, I admit to being biased, but so much of the Major Junior industrial complex seems to be a giant cesspool. I mean, these are the guys in the spotlight. I can only imagine the kind of shit that goes on in the CHL's backwaters like Chicoutimi, Sudbury and Medicine Hat when given a bunch of entitled horny teenagers, not much to do and a little notoriety. (Though I suppose the same thing could happen in Durham, N.H.; Big Rapids or Colorado Springs.)

Speaking of Major Junior and cesspools, Boughner was running the Windsor Spitfires around the time a kid from my coverage area was accused and later convicted of sexual assault, so I certainly have some opinions here. That said, I'm kind of shocked that the Sharks fired their coaching staff and they don't even have a permanent GM? And as far as I know the Sharks aren't owned by Howard Ballard's ghost, so there's all kinds of levels of weird going on here.

I kind of thought Yzerman might hire a European here, but I think the jury's mostly out on this one. The Red Wings have talent now, but not enough of it to make a serious dent in what has been to this point a nearly impenetrable top half of the Atlantic Division. As evidenced by these playoffs, Tampa remains impossible to kill, but Florida and Toronto are still loaded even if Boston is declining. And at some point you have to figure the dozens of top-five draft picks accumulated by Ottawa and Buffalo will have to turn into something.

 

Yzerman knows he needs to accelerate the rebuild, which he discovered was going to take him longer than he thought
His draft picks have been 4, 6 and 6
Raymond and Seider were 4 and 6 but it helps if you get 1s and 2s
He’s at 8 next week
He turned Anthony Mantha into Jakub Vrana and the goalie of the future
He needs another move like that, likely with Tyler Bertuzzi
As for Lalonde, I’m sure he has some Victor Hedman stories for Simon Edvinsson, next season’s big Swedish rookie

 

That unemployment period did not last long.

 

Guess Lightning are keeping Palat
As for Preds and Forsberg, who knows

Lightning clear cap space by trading McDonagh to Predators

 

Maybe that's why they fired Boughner, they were just waiting for the ink to dry on this and Grier told them he wanted his own guy.

 

As they were saying on Defector, it's probably someone who is either very happy to be there or someone who's gonna get a very long leash, because the Sharks are gonna be bad for a while.

 

Rick Tocchet? Motivator for young guys, can connect with holdover vets, generally upbeat personality and players coach.