2010 NHL Offseason Thread

[Sepukku]

Out of that list, the only people that would've benefited the Penguins last season's playoffs are Malone and Scuderi. Here's to hoping that Staal plays more like Malone this season, I'd love to see him post in front of the net more often.

Honestly I was considering, if we don't resign Guerin, Staal being the net man on the 1st PP but then I realized how even worse that would make our 2nd PP unit. Its going to have to be Tangredi or Kunitz playing down low / around the net on the 1st PP or we're going to have no natural centers (or a 4th line centerman) as our faceoff man and just all around so-so people for the entire forwards PP2 unit.

[Callisto]

Honestly I was considering, if we don't resign Guerin, Staal being the net man on the 1st PP but then I realized how even worse that would make our 2nd PP unit. Its going to have to be Tangredi or Kunitz playing down low / around the net on the 1st PP or we're going to have no natural centers (or a 4th line centerman) as our faceoff man and just all around so-so people for the entire forwards PP2 unit.

Thought Crosby is usually the net guy on 1st PP?

[Ishido]

They have 2 net guys kinda, one is stapled to the net a la Holmstrom and then Crosby usually hovers around there when the puck is at the point or will move a bit to occasionally receive a pass if the PP is feeling spicy and wants to do something more than take outside shots. Or that is what I saw from watching several Pens games.

[Ivaden]

Crosby usually lingers around the right face-off circle and just waits for Letang to miss the net again.

[Bregor]

On topic:

http://i40.tinypic.com/10yn9rs.jpg

[Callisto]

All I knew for sure was that Malkin set up camp at the top of the right circle and did. not. move.

[Bregor]

Three hours and change until the Kaberle deadline... With all the rumors floating around and Burke's recent comments, this is big-time fail if he can't get anything in return for a wasted year of a premier puck-moving defenseman.

[Ishido]

Rumors have Tampa Bay as the team heading that hunt but I have to guess that he isn't going to move. Burke doesn't want picks and no one is going to give you an equally good player, so he's essentially boned.

[Bregor]

I just don't get it, what's the point? I could understand not wanting picks if he thinks one of two things, either Toronto is a playoff team this season, or Kaberle will extend for a reasonable cap hit next summer. My money is on the latter, but can you win with the scoring depth they have? The only other big contract coming off the books for them in '11 will be Giggy.

Edit: On the latest Bolts rumor, one Toronto fan weighs in.

I don't know what's worse... not trading Kaberle or trading him for Ryan Malone.

lol

[Callisto]

My money is on the latter, but can you win with the scoring depth they have?

You can when Versteeg has his inevitable breakout 100-point year, telling you it's coming!

[Callisto]

Unrelated, but tonight @ my hockey class I had a ridiculous shift where I had a sweet backhand pass for an assist, followed it with a really nice move to a backhand shot for a goal, then finished the trifecta by puking in a garbage can on the bench. It was pretty pro.

[Eckskalibur]

Just curious Callisto. What kind of hockey class are you enrolled in?

[Callisto]

the tl;dr of it:

Spoiler: show

It's a really small adult instructional, the closest rink to me is actually where the Chicago Wolves practice(Atlanta's AHL affiliate), unfortunately the attendance has been really rough the last couple of months, we only see about 10-12 skaters and if we're lucky a goalie.

It's pretty basic, only 80 minutes for $20(the price sucks, though a lot of the regulars are working on getting them to lower it), the level on the skaters varies, there's a few ladies who can barely stand on skates, a few guys who have rocket shots but can't skate for shit, a few guys who can skate/shoot/pass but are terrible at stickhandling(me). The normal coach is a girl who coaches all levels of hockey and works with handicapped kids as her main job so she's pretty good at being patient with people who are slow as shit to pick new things up.

Her little brother has been helping run it while he's back from college where I'm assuming he plays(not sure which), but he's pretty good and has seriously stepped up the complexity of the drills, usually we do practice drills for about an hour, then if there's goalies we do a scrimmage for the last 20.

It could be better, the low turnout makes it so we often can't get a scrimmage game going, no goalies obviously means shooting is less interesting(I usually aim for the posts just to add some challenge), and when we do play it's like 20 straight minutes of 3-on-3 or 4-on-4 with little to no rest, but the instructors are good and the other option would be to drive an extra 15 miles to pay the same amount of money to do it on Wednesdays at a busier rink, they always pull 30~ guys and 2-4 goaltenders, but I've been doing the one that I go to since December and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

[Eckskalibur]

I got ya. That's pretty interesting. I didn't know what kind of stuff they did for adult classes. I wish that I could find something to help hone my skills a bit. I've been playing more or less all of my life (I'm 24). I've always lived around the corner from a rink and when I didn't I worked at one. But I've never bothered playing for an organization (i.e. High school/college). High school was all politics and college is really expensive and demands far too much of your schedule for the division it plays in.The past four years or so, I've played in men's leagues around the Philadelphia Area. Most of the people in those leagues are complete tool bags. Do you play in any men's leagues?

For practice now, I basically just go play open hockey once or twice a week. Usually once during the day when no one else is there to skate and practice stickhandling/shooting and once on weekend nights to play with a crowd to get some real skating in. During the winter I run an outdoor ice rink in Philadelphia and it's a pretty sweet gig for getting the employees onto the ice after work to play some pond hockey. We're surrounded by a parking lot so we can't take real shots and what not but it's pretty awesome for fucking around for a few hours. We get a ton of skating in and we bought some pond hockey nets so we don't have to shoot high and that keeps us pretty entertained.

[Bregor]

STATEMENT FROM BRIAN BURKE

The hockey club confirms this evening that Tomas Kaberle remains a Leaf. While a number of Clubs made offers to trade for Tomas, none of them reflected Tomas's value to our team. I understand a period like this is stressful to the player, and we are pleased that there is a resolution, and we can all continue to prepare for the coming season.

http://mapleleafs.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=535988

lol

[Palin]

Predicted and boring. I'm sure Kaberle will be eager to rejoin the Leafs after being shopped so hard this season.

[Oxyminus]

Personally I'm relieved. This summer has yet to have its annual Sather Blunder.

[Ishido]

Personally I'm relieved. This summer has yet to have its annual Sather Blunder.

Signing Derek fucking Boogaard for fucking $1.65m is not a blunder? Good god you Rangers fans are easy.

[Oxyminus]

Signing Derek fucking Boogaard for fucking $1.65m is not a blunder? Good god you Rangers fans are easy.

Compared to the moves Sather has made lately... Redden for 6.5 per, Brashear (after nearly taking Betts' head off in game 6) for 2 years @ 1.4 per.

I'm not wild about the Boogard signing, but apparently they felt there was a need to adress toughness. The guy will barely play, and as things stand that 650k overpayment won't matter since the general consensus is Redden will be AHL bound after camp.

[Bregor]

Fucking shit. Channel flipping, landed on CSN Washington, saw a Caps commercial and I got goosebumps. Is it October yet?