New Around The League Thread

[jagknife]

8 hours ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

One last blurb about the whole Spittin' podcast (forgot to mention this)...they really made it a point for people not to dismiss Commodore's comments due to "Well, he's had a hard-on for Babcock for years because he kept getting scratched, he couldn't accept that he wasn't good enough anymore, maybe I shouldn't take him too seriously, after all he seems kinda loony!" sentiments some fans might be having.

And they did an EXCELLENT job really trying to get through to the "Quick to dismiss by default" crowd, especially multiple factions of it:

No, this is absolutely not a case of soft youth not being able to handle playing for an "old school" coach.

No, it's not some case of a bitter ex-player taking shots at his former coach just because he had an axe to grind or wanted to make his ex-coach look bad for the hell of it.

No, it's not about someone being unfairly canceled due to management buckling to some mass with an agenda.

And since some were definitely thinking "It's only Spittin' Chiclets, should I really take them all that seriously?", I'm sure Spittin' themselves were sensitive about being dismissed or somehow making too much out of something to get attention.

It made me realize how difficult it can be for people to come forward in cases like this...we're so used to people being "canceled" even when it doesn't seem to be fair or make much sense that it's easy for some to not bother to familiarize themselves with what's actually happened, and to almost reflexively blame the victims.  Glad to see this incident was resolved the way that it should have been.  And Chiclets played a big role in that happening.

Everyone's favorite phrase, "Let me piggy back here"

What does this say about Jenner and Geudreau? To me its VERY telling both rushed to make statements negating what was being reported and NEITHER ONE reached out to their teammates saying, hey this isnt happening to me but anyone else?

In this freaking day and age where we WANT people to trust their "leaders" in any environment, it bothers the freaking hell out of me the Captain of the team didn't do any straw polling of his teammates before trying to cover his coach's ass.

If it wasn't for the NHL & NHLPA doing some actual digging, who knows if this would have come fully into the light and that toxic piece of sh!t could still be in charge.

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

@jagknife I hear what you’re saying but seriously at this point I hope this whole mess turns out to be something that EVERYONE can learn from…starting with “If your coach has a history of inappropriate conduct and is repeating a pattern, not only you do NOT have to take it, you CAN speak out and do so without having to be afraid of how it might affect your career.”

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Here's a pretty good read about former defenseman Jakub Kindl (played 262 AHL games and 331 NHL games)...there's a part about how much he couldn't stand Babcock (see below...get the feeling more and more stories will be coming out about Babcock's past mindfvck nonsense), but the whole article is interesting, from a pure "former first-rounder with promise whose career didn't quite pan out as hoped" standpoint, the starts and stops and struggles:

Jakub Kindl : Seventh defenseman | Stories | Bez frází (bezfrazi.cz)

He's only 36 years old and is still playing, in Norway.

The Babcock stuff:

Even when I was drafted, Babcock asked the scouts what kind of player I was.

"Something like Martin Škoula from Colorado," they said.

"Oh, Jesus," was his reaction.

I wasn't his favorite player from the beginning, and even though Holland liked me, Babcock seemed to constantly test what I could handle and he let me know that he didn’t like me as a player. I couldn’t stand him as a person.

I saw him making jokes with the others, but with me he barely exchanged a few words. If he did, it was to humiliate me. For example, he once put me on the right side of the defense, and I was looking at the lineup in disbelief. He was just passing by and heard me, so he looked at the lineup and said, "Yeah, you're on the right side. You have trouble playing on the left, and I'm making it harder for you, right?"

He erased it and put me back on the left.

He seldomly trusted me on the ice. My teammates also wondered what the issue was, because even when I didn't play for a long time, I immediately was among the best when he gave me a chance. Then he let me sit again. Sometimes, I didn’t play a single game for two months, then I jumped in, played well, scored a goal and an assist, for example, and then didn’t play the next game again.

It's not fun to be on the sidelines for so long, then get a chance and when you barely get in the game rhythm, you are out of the lineup again. It happened so often that I didn't know if I would be playing in the evening. One time, I stayed in the locker room after the morning workout and was suddenly told to prepare for the game. I had already completed two extra training sessions that day.

Despite all that, I played well that day. And then I ended up among the substitutes again.

But I didn’t let him break me. Despite what was happening, I kept my head up in the locker room so no one could notice how frustrating it was. I kept it all inside and tried to be a good teammate. I learned to stay calm, never too negative, never too positive. I tried to keep a good mood and help the other boys as best I could. That's why no one ever had a problem with me.

Maybe my behavior didn’t help. Babcock saw that he could do whatever he wanted to me, and I would accept it. And whenever he gave me a chance, I wouldn’t disappoint.

The first year after he left Detroit, we played in Toronto, which was his new team. In overtime, I picked the puck up in our defending zone, broke away and scored the game-winning goal.

I was happy like never before. I won’t deny it, but I was even more delighted with how happy my teammates were for me. They knew how hard it was under Babcock. That evening, I received a lot of messages from people all over the club, from chefs, guys who parked our cars, facility personnel, and from the people who worked in offices. They all congratulated me.

[Satans Hockey]

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/38454951/indictment-alleges-mass-shooting-threat-stanley-cup-game-las-vegas?fbclid=IwAR2X5fh8IxIECt-lD5beyiDMPZE5jYe6TeWljicKRAnlX9o2-hLN6mk77Lk

[NJDevils1214]

Pretty boring pre-season game so far between LA and ARI. I hope they put on a good show eventually.

[Nicomo]

[NJDevils1214]

Miceli, Cooley, and Keller are going to have people around the league paying attention to ARI for good reasons for the first time since...idk...Shane Doan.

[jagknife]

23 hours ago, Satans Hockey said:

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/38454951/indictment-alleges-mass-shooting-threat-stanley-cup-game-las-vegas?fbclid=IwAR2X5fh8IxIECt-lD5beyiDMPZE5jYe6TeWljicKRAnlX9o2-hLN6mk77Lk

 

NON-HOCKEY SOAPBOX TRIGGER WARNING

Spoiler

What I HATE about reports like this: they're pretty much swept under the rug when they're thwarted. No articles celebrating when the police/fed/whomever intervene before something horrendously tragic happens. The system worked on this one, someone spoke up and said something and it saved lives.

Meanwhile, when something fails in the chain, and some piece of sh!t carries out an attack, its wall-to-wall sensationalism about how somegthing failed. how the police are useless, and then it becomes a political poker chip.

ESPECIALLY since I nearly became a statistic in July with my wife, it wasn't until a week AFTER that we found out the guy who had killed a Fargo police officer before thankfully being killed was loaded with an arsenal in his car that would make combat ground units giddy. And the only way I found out about THAT article being posted after actively looking for a few days following was from my friend who lives in the area.

fvcking gore-hungry media...

Good job Vegas PD and all those involved, and to the DA for getting the charges to stick long enough for an indictment.

 

[Nicomo]

Seems like quite a bargain. 

[RizzMB30]

1 hour ago, Nicomo said:

Seems like quite a bargain. 

Not bad, but I guess I would have liked the deal more if they got 4 or 5 years. At least he stood his ground and got paid a lot more than what ANA was looking for. I heard "reports" that he was offered 4m and that's what started the daily negotiations. Verbeek seems like he doesn't fvck around either when it comes to overpaying guys. 

It's not a bad bridge deal for a 22 year old. You can still hit him with the max term deal at the end of this contract and have him until he's 33. Verbeek is right that he'll be well worth the money they will pay him if he can develop his defense and two-way game. Also it's not an insulting bridge deal for a young player of his level. It's a bridge as far as term, but the AAV isn't bad to offset that a little bit. 

These super young, elite talents, you have to be careful to not bridge them and underpay them too. Say Zegras took the 4m AAV, he could come back and demand 11m AAV/8years in 3 years. I mean, we could've done that to Hughes and it logically would have made sense for the team, but Fitzy took on the risk. Just something where the team low-balled at 4m, and he probably high balled the team at 7-8m aav and they came together and worked it out. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by RizzMB30

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Yeah it’s obviously an attempt to get a big payday in a few years.  Will be in about the same position that Bratt just was when he signed his 8-year deal.

Feels like the Ducks did pretty well here.

[RizzMB30]

21 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

Yeah it’s obviously an attempt to get a big payday in a few years.  Will be in about the same position that Bratt just was when he signed his 8-year deal.

Feels like the Ducks did pretty well here.

Yeah, Bratter signed his bridge deal for 5.45 for that one year deal. And that didn't break our bank one bit. Worth every penny last year. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

No Alexis Lafreniere decision yet amid disappointing Rangers camp (nypost.com)

If he starts slow this season, the Ranger faithful are going to be even more all over him than they already are heh heh.

[RunninWithTheDevil]

2 hours ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

No Alexis Lafreniere decision yet amid disappointing Rangers camp (nypost.com)

If he starts slow this season, the Ranger faithful are going to be even more all over him than they already are heh heh.

 

[MadDog2020]

fvck off Gary

 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

3 hours ago, MadDog2020 said:

fvck off Gary

 

If that cap projection holds, plenty of teams are going to be feeling THAT crunch.  

[MadDog2020]

1 minute ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

If that cap projection holds, plenty of teams are going to be feeling THAT crunch

It’s about a $4.5 million increase. I have no idea if that meets projections or not lol

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

3 minutes ago, MadDog2020 said:

It’s about a $4.5 million increase. I have no idea if that meets projections or not lol

My mistake, according to Capfriendly, that’s about what was expected for 2024-25.  

[Lateralous]

8 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

If that cap projection holds, plenty of teams are going to be feeling THAT crunch.  

Given how clean our current salary structure is and how relatively few meaningful UFAs and RFAs we have coming up, I don’t think it’s the worst thing that the cap stays as flat as possible for the next year or two.   I mean, it might cost us Toffoli but who else?   

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

1 minute ago, Lateralous said:

Given how clean our current salary structure is and how relatively few meaningful UFAs and RFAs we have coming up, I don’t think it’s the worst thing that the cap stays as flat as possible for the next year or two.   I mean, it might cost us Toffoli but who else?   

Devils are in pretty good shape for the next couple of years.  We’ll see what happens with Dawson and Schmid…they’ll be RFAs after this season.

[Lateralous]

42 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

Devils are in pretty good shape for the next couple of years.  We’ll see what happens with Dawson and Schmid…they’ll be RFAs after this season.

We’re not losing an RFA that Fitz wants and I think in some ways a lower cap helps his negotiating position.  
 

My point is that a flat cap affects us way less than the Colorados, Torontos and Tampas of the world that need all the cap space they can get. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

3 hours ago, Lateralous said:

We’re not losing an RFA that Fitz wants and I think in some ways a lower cap helps his negotiating position.  
 

My point is that a flat cap affects us way less than the Colorados, Torontos and Tampas of the world that need all the cap space they can get. 

I was more saying that we’ll see what kind of AAV Dawson and Schmid wind up carrying.  I wasn’t suggesting that either one were ever potentially being moved to cap concerns.

Yeah in my “teams feeling the crunch” post, that’s what I was getting at…that some other teams would be hurt by a flatter cap much more than the Devils.  The Devils may lose Toffoli due to the cap, but I don’t think the initial Plan A ever included Toffoli spending more than a year here.  That being said, if he REALLY clicks with Jack and Jesper in the regular season, he may ultimately find a way to go force himself into the picture beyond this year…but he’d have to take some kind of a discount for sure.  

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Damn, this is harsh...love it love it love it lmao:

Alexis Lafreniere’s preseason has been unfathomably bad — here’s what Rangers should do about it (msn.com)

The truth that Alexis Lafreniere has not earned a top-six assignment through his work during training camp and his first three exhibition games is self-evident. One can argue that the lad from Saint-Eustache has not even earned a spot on the roster.

I, like Hall of Fame announcer Jack Buck when Kirk Gibson went deep against Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, cannot believe what I have seen. Granted the opportunity to nail down the first-line assignment on right wing, Lafreniere seems to be shrinking under the low wattage of the preseason.

It’s not that No. 13 — who will turn 22 the day before the Oct. 12 opener in Buffalo — hasn’t looked like a first-overall draft selection on the verge of a breakout season, it’s that for the most part Lafreniere has looked like an undrafted invitee to training camp on a tryout. Matt Rempe — a sixth-round pick in 2020 – made more of a positive impression before he was sent out to Hartford last weekend.

Keep in mind, there's a group of Ranger fans who've been insisting all along that if this stiff simply got the same kind of playing time that Jack was, well, he'd be just as successful dammit!  Well, he's doing what exactly, with this golden opportunity he's been handed?

fvck the Rangers, fvck Lafreniere, and fvck their fans.  

[MadDog2020]

4 minutes ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

Damn, this is harsh...love it love it love it lmao:

Alexis Lafreniere’s preseason has been unfathomably bad — here’s what Rangers should do about it (msn.com)

The truth that Alexis Lafreniere has not earned a top-six assignment through his work during training camp and his first three exhibition games is self-evident. One can argue that the lad from Saint-Eustache has not even earned a spot on the roster.

I, like Hall of Fame announcer Jack Buck when Kirk Gibson went deep against Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, cannot believe what I have seen. Granted the opportunity to nail down the first-line assignment on right wing, Lafreniere seems to be shrinking under the low wattage of the preseason.

It’s not that No. 13 — who will turn 22 the day before the Oct. 12 opener in Buffalo — hasn’t looked like a first-overall draft selection on the verge of a breakout season, it’s that for the most part Lafreniere has looked like an undrafted invitee to training camp on a tryout. Matt Rempe — a sixth-round pick in 2020 – made more of a positive impression before he was sent out to Hartford last weekend.

Keep in mind, there's a group of Ranger fans who've been insisting all along that if this stiff simply got the same kind of playing time that Jack was, well, he'd be just as successful dammit!  Well, he's doing what exactly, with this golden opportunity he's been handed?

fvck the Rangers, fvck Lafreniere, and fvck their fans.  

 

[RizzMB30]

Drysdale signs for 3 years in ANA. 

Cap friendly reporting 2.3 a year AAV. https://www.capfriendly.com/players/jamie-drysdale