**** Official 2021-2022 NHL Thread ****

[Bearcat]

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by JohnnyHammersticks

Honestly, getting Lehky, Manson, and Nuke back was better than I thought we'd do. Very happy about all 3.

That's a pretty hefty price tag Seattle paid for Burakovsky. He's very good when he's on, but he's not very physical and you could make a case for him being injury-prone. Good for him though, he helped us win a Cup (except for the games where he was injured or a healthy scratch).

Now we just need to sign a couple vets on the cheap who are hungry for a Cup and we're good.

Yeah, I'd rather tale a chance with Nichushkin at $6/year than sign Burakovsky at $5.5.

To be through one day of free agency and the only other hole to fill is potentially Kadri's is pretty nice.

[DJ's left nut]

The Avalanche are so goddamn irritating.

The Blues are hard up against the cap. And y'know what - they don't have a bad contract on that entire !@#$ing team. At least not for right this very minute (in 3 years a few of them won't look good).

But Marco Scandella at $3.275 is as close to an underwater contract as they have on that roster. Everyone else is being paid at/below their production/talent. And it was the case last year as well.

But since the Avs have like 5 guys making a FRACTION of what they should be making, merely doing a very good job with your cap and roster structure isn't good enough. You're still gonna have to deal with that friggen juggernaut.

So the answer is to just wait these Colorado deals out and home Sakic slips on some of this contracts going forward. Or just build a very good team, home Colorado's goalie situation implodes and then you get a little lucky.

Because as well as the Blues have built their roster and roster depth, they simply cannot match Colorados skater talent.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

The Avalanche are so goddamn irritating.

The Blues are hard up against the cap. And y'know what - they don't have a bad contract on that entire !@#$ing team. At least not for right this very minute (in 3 years a few of them won't look good).

But Marco Scandella at $3.275 is as close to an underwater contract as they have on that roster. Everyone else is being paid at/below their production/talent. And it was the case last year as well.

But since the Avs have like 5 guys making a FRACTION of what they should be making, merely doing a very good job with your cap and roster structure isn't good enough. You're still gonna have to deal with that friggen juggernaut.

So the answer is to just wait these Colorado deals out and home Sakic slips on some of this contracts going forward. Or just build a very good team, home Colorado's goalie situation implodes and then you get a little lucky.

Because as well as the Blues have built their roster and roster depth, they simply cannot match Colorados skater talent.

The Avs have the benefit of 1) being really shitty for a long time (and therefore getting top draft picks) and 2) making a couple of really good trades (Duchene) that also netted them top draft picks. Having Byram and Newhook for peanuts plus MacKinnon being laughably underpaid helps.

They'll stretch it out by dumping EJ's $6 million next year and a couple more young guys in the prospect pipeline, but they also mortgaged the future a bit at the end of last season. It paid off, but it'll get really tough to keep it all together in 3-4 years.

After that, I have to believe that MacKinnon + Makar will keep them in the running for just about as long as they're both still around, but they certainly won't be able to maintain the "juggernaut" when they run out of cheap contracts.

[Bearcat]

Looking like 7 years/$9.8... and speculated the largest offer by the Flames was 8 years/$10.5.

But hey... Columbus is marginally better than Calgary, maybe?

(I know he wanted to be closer to family in Jersey, too)

Johnny Gaudreau is going to Columbus

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) July 13, 2022

[KC_Connection]

So he took 15M less to play in Columbus? I've been to Columbus...the city of Calgary must really suck.

[Bearcat]

The wine isn't great, but the bottles are pretty cool!
https://manoswine.com/collections/colorado-avalanche

[Pasta Little Brioni]

I've never understood it. Cheap, nasty ass wine at markup prices just because you slap an ugly ass logo on it sucker born every minute

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brother

I've never understood it. Cheap, nasty ass wine at markup prices just because you slap an ugly ass logo on it sucker born every minute

To be fair, most championship stuff is crap quality. My Chiefs Super Bowl t-shirts are super thin and probably won't last long.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

Originally Posted by DaFace

To be fair, most championship stuff is crap quality. My Chiefs Super Bowl t-shirts are super thin and probably won't last long.

No doubt. Complete garbage

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by DaFace

To be fair, most championship stuff is crap quality. My Chiefs Super Bowl t-shirts are super thin and probably won't last long.

Yeah, I bought a Royals one that was ~$30 at the time and looked like it wouldn't last a wash... but, it's somehow still around and doesn't look terrible (don't remember where I got my Chiefs SB tshirt, but it's actually pretty good quality).

I have a fanatics gift card and was browsing the other day... they want $40 for an Avalanche tshirt. I know they have a lot of sales though, so might wait for one of those 65% off sale and grab something.

They'll slap a sticker on anything, but the one thing I got for KU was a pair of etched glasses that cost just as much as slapping a sticker on a pilsner glass... similar to the wine bottles that are well designed and will last forever.

[Fish]

Thanks for the win.

[Gadzooks]

Yeah, I've heard this rumor since FA started.
A bit strange though, considering Lou signed him to the shitty deal he's just getting out of.

[DJ's left nut]

So we can all agree he’s dirty piece of shit now, right?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

So we can all agree he’s dirty piece of shit now, right?

Blues fans were largely alone in believing he was dirty this season, so I'm not sure how his leaving to another non-Blues team makes any difference.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Blues fans were largely alone in believing he was dirty this season, so I'm not sure how his leaving to another non-Blues team makes any difference.

Because we're all Claude Lemiuex apologists?


Avalanche player or not, I've never really shouted at clouds about guys like Kadri, Evander Kane, Tom Wilson, etc... they cleared have the talent to be in the NHL and it's up to the NHL/NHLPA to figure out player discipline. I've kind of stopped caring about it because nobody in the league seems to care about disciplining the dirty hits, so why should I?

And if someone with their talent can keep their head on straight, then I really don't care. Not saying people shouldn't care at all if a star player is knocked out of the playoffs from a dirty hit, I'm just kind of over hoping the NHL will fix it.

That said, goons like Ryan Reaves can go **** themselves because they aren't even talented enough to be in the NHL.


So for Kadri... I wish him the best and hope he keeps his head on straight, as he's obviously been given several 2nd chances at this point and made the most of it with playing clean this postseason.