NJDfan1711

Leave it to the lawyer to say that

Thought so, but wasn't sure. Thanks!

We can only vote once per day, right?

Nico Hischier: 44 Jack Hughes: 31 Travis Zajac: 26 Taylor Hall : 20 Mackenzie Blackwood : 20 Blake Coleman: 19 Jesper Bratt: 16 (-1) P. K. Subban : 16 Kyle Palmieri : 14 Ty Smith : 13 Jesper Boqvist : 10 Nikita Gusev: 3 Damon Severson : 3 (+1) ELIMINATED: John Hayden  Mirco Mueller  Kevin Rooney  Miles Wood Connor Carrick Wayne Simmonds Andy Greene Sami Vatanen Cory Schneider Will Butcher Pavel Zacha

Nico Hischier: 44 Jack Hughes: 29 Travis Zajac: 26 (+1) Blake Coleman: 20 Taylor Hall : 19 Mackenzie Blackwood : 20 P. K. Subban : 15 Jesper Bratt: 17 Kyle Palmieri : 14 Ty Smith : 14 Jesper Boqvist : 10 (-1) Nikita Gusev: 5 Damon Severson : 2 ELIMINATED: John Hayden  Mirco Mueller  Kevin Rooney  Miles Wood Connor Carrick Wayne Simmonds Andy Greene Sami Vatanen Cory Schneider Will Butcher Pavel Zacha

Nico Hischier: 44 Jack Hughes: 26 Travis Zajac: 23 Blake Coleman: 20 Mackenzie Blackwood : 18 Taylor Hall : 19 P. K. Subban : 16 Jesper Bratt: 16 Kyle Palmieri : 15 Ty Smith : 13  Jesper Boqvist : 9 Nikita Gusev: 8 (+1) Damon Severson : 6 Pavel Zacha: 2 (-1) ELIMINATED: John Hayden  Mirco Mueller  Kevin Rooney  Miles Wood Connor Carrick Wayne Simmonds Andy Greene Sami Vatanen Cory Schneider Will Butcher

I actually feel like what you said is contradictory... you mention that the conference runner-ups had netminders of Martin Jones and Petr Mrazek, two guys who are clearly pretty average tenders, which would then make the argument pretty easy that, had those teams had either Rask or Binnington, they would have had a much better chance at being the teams that made it to the Cup finals rather than coming up a round short.

Not sure if you mean me, but I'm not trying to be dramatic at all - just merely stating why I brought something up a few weeks ago, and how it's still relevant now.

Nico Hischier: 40 (-1) Jack Hughes : 23 Travis Zajac: 21 Taylor Hall : 18 Blake Coleman: 19 Mackenzie Blackwood : 18 P.K. Subban : 16 Kyle Palmieri : 14 Jesper Bratt: 15 Ty Smith : 13  Pavel Zacha Jesper Boqvist : 10 Nikita Gusev: 7 Damon Severson : 7 Will Butcher : 5 (+1) ELIMINATED: John Hayden  Mirco Mueller  Kevin Rooney  Miles Wood Connor Carrick Wayne Simmonds Andy Greene Sami Vatanen Cory Schneider

People were wondering why I downvoted Nico a while back, and now it's pretty clear that was the right move. While I love the guy and he's a great player, he's not great to the point where he's, according to our list here, more than double effective/valuable any other player we have on the team. I kinda stopped playing a week ago because it hardly seemed worth it, and now at this point it seems like a virtual certainty that Nico runs away with it. Ideally with this kind of game you should have a few guys in contention and around the same # of points for the lead - if not, then when it comes down to the final two, you're literally be going back and forth upvoting and downvoting he same two guys for a very long time. This is even worse though, we don't even have two guys - we have one guy who's the clear favorite, and it's going to be next to impossible to get anyone else even near him unless everyone suddenly decides to downvote him in unison.

What a great dude. Whenever his contract is up, he needs to be on the next plane here.

Damn, so many people ready to push Hall to the curb. I for one am hoping, and optimistic, that he's going to be 100% and that he signs a long-term deal with us and will be here for the long haul. I called it a while back though and people thought I was crazy in regards to the contract that he gets, if he gets one at all, and how it would/should be approached cautiously and given some thought before they just throw a blank check at him. I really don't want to see him traded though, even if the return was fair or swayed slightly in our favor. The guy is a great player and seems to be a model teammate on and off the ice. We've been lacking leadership for a while and if we can lock him up for several years at a reasonable price, I can see him being the cornerstone of this team for the next several years and hopefully leading us to multiple Cups.

I get what you mean, but isn't that sort of the idea of building the best team and/or a championship caliber team.... to have good/great players on all lines? Personally I'm still on the fence in regards to Wood's abilities and potential, but if you're of the belief that he's more of a 3rd line player, and our team is deep to the point where he only fits on the 4th line, I feel like that's a good problem to have. I mean, if you had a team of Ovechkin/Crosby/Kane/Lanie/Matthews/Kucherov/Stamkos/Hall/Malkin as your top 9, and then you were forced to put MacKinnon on the 4th line, I don't think anyone would see that was a "waste" And that's for someone of his caliber. It's even less of a waste when it's someone like Wood.

You don't think Wood on the 4th line, with his speed, would be able to take advantage of other team's slower 4th lines?

I'm not sure. Based on past trends, I could see the young(er) guys being eased into the lineup and not necessarily getting the start on opening night, but I kinda hope I'm wrong and I wouldn't mind, or be surprised, if he was in and Carrick was out. Normally I like the lines balanced in the way you describe, i.e. with one or two skilled guys and then someone who is gritty and tough to protect them, but with 3 smaller guys like Hughes Bratt and Gusev, I think they have so much skill that it might not be an issue. I sort of think of it in terms of the Lightning when they had Palat, Johnson, and Killorn/Kucherov. None of those guys are big, nor gritty, and it still worked out really well for them and they dominated for quite a while. I hope you're right, and I'd say it's probably 50-50 right now. Being that Carrick had a limited showing last year, I feel like, if he has a good camp, they might slide him in first and then eventually work Smith in, but I could easily see Smith totally impressing and essentially forcing the coaching staff to start him. We'll see. Me too. I think he'll get time, but I think it'll be limited and they're going to ease him into games here and there. I should have clarified...when I write a proposed lineup, for the d-men, I rarely, if ever, coordinate them in terms of which side I think a guy is gonna be on. I merely just write it up in terms of the pairings and which line I think a guy will be on. I know it's important, but I actually seldom remember which of our guys are LD and RD, and some coaches don't particularly place much emphasis on it, so it slips my mind quite often and I just overlook it when making the pairings.