Bedard seems like RNH. Too slight of a frame to put on weight, not an elite skater, will never be able to physically take over a game like MacKinnon/Matthews. And yes, better suited to play wing.
trade backs seem so rare, I assume they’ll just take the best forward available at 1. Then again who knows, it wouldn’t shock me if they went D again because again, they have no plan. Actually they have a plan, it goes Trade anything worthwhile Draft a bunch of players ? We’re the 2009 Blackhawks
Hawks need so many pieces and are so far away from competing, nothing wrong with going BPA and taking another D. Since they take longer to develop you can take a forward next year.
I think they've past the "oh look we're rebuilding" stage into the "do they suck and will they suck forever" stage for some FAs
the Blackhawks management seems to think the rebuild is going perfectly and there’s a non-minority of the fanbase that are right there with them. They think the only way to get good is to have top 5 picks for the next 3-4 years. Signing rantanen would just mess that up
He did come back so must be ok. Two big wins in back to back games over Ottawa for the Lightning, both in regulation.
Pretty soft penalty shot call to end the sharks/nucks game. Would like to see refs get help on those rather than using their split second judgement.
Does anyone here actually care about the Four Nations? I’ll probably watch because I am weak but I’m mostly annoyed the season is shutting down for two weeks for a non Olympic event.
I’ll watch next Saturday’s US/Canada game for sure and check in on the other games. I’d rather have Olympics too but at least we get some form of best on best. Russia not being involved dampens it a little though I understand why.
This is how I feel. Seeing elite line combos that we don't get normally like McDavid/Crosby and Matthews/Tkachuk should be really cool.
so they scheduled canada finland at 1pm, makes a ton of sense…. Clearly, Bettman doesn’t care about canadians.
So was Stars/Kings, league needs to decide what goalie interference is though. That was one of the weaker ones I can remember, especially with an overturn on review.
5 wins, 16 losses in those 21 games. I think Biz and Hank’s point last night is he needs to play a better two-way game, not that he needs to put up more points, hence the whole pond hockey reference.
Is this a comp of each’s first 44 games of their rookie season or what sample size are we working with here?
Put me in the camp that the hand-wringing over Bedard is drastically overblown for a guy that's still 19 years old, but flat expected goal rates aren't really valued because they're drastically affected by quality of teammates, competition, deployment, etc. What matters a lot more is what they're doing relative to their team. https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/replacements/2425/CHI/bedarco05/wrap https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/replacements/2425/S.J/celebma06/wrap This also while Bedard is getting a 68% ozs% and Celebrini is getting 44. btw this isn't a "Bedard's overrated" post, it's a "What Celebrini is doing as a 2 way player at his age is remarkable" post.
It’s ridiculous how little the league respects fans’ time. Don’t advertise a 3:30est start and then drop the puck at 3:50est. I don’t care about it being the second game of an ESPN doubleheader.
We were having a discussion a while back about whether or not a goalie should leave the crease to clear a puck that he could pretty easily get to, and the general consensus was "probably not, because too much can go wrong even if he gets there first." Not the exact same thing, but exhibit A: