gilligoos

Not sure where you're seeing full month of away games. Are you talking about the 5 game road trip at the end of January?

hey at least we get to coin the term "we're going to the crypt" whenever we play them.

To answer your point about why not Swedish or Finnish league, the Swiss league is generally the highest paid league. They can pay foreign star players 750K-2M contracts, and many former NHLers play there (Winnik has played in Geneva for the last few year where Vatanen is now), and large majority of NHLers played there during the lockout. Plus the Swiss league has more lenient rules in terms of international contracts, and more leniency with NHL players breaking contracts to move to the NHL midseason I believe. In terms of not taking a PTO contract, Vatanen is too good to even have to go to that route. Right now he is basically just staying in shape until an NHL team has a major injury in defense. He'll be signed by December. At least he's getting paid a decent contract while keeping in shape, whereas PTOs you're busting your butt off without a financial contract. I follow the Swiss league and he has like 2G 2A in his first 2 games. And it's not uncommon to see former older NHL players without contracts start in the Swiss league only to move to the NHL with a contract 4-6 weeks into the season. I've seen this happen every year. This is the reality of the salary cap era where teams prioritize the top players and younger cheaper contracts, and fringe players just have to wait it out. It's even more difficult now for Fringe players with the flat cap over the next couple years due to the pandemic.

I live in Studio City. First I have to say that the San Fernando Valley has tons of knowledgeable Kings fans...I'm generally surprised that i see way more Kings stickers here than anywhere else in SoCal. I also agree it's a numbers games. The ratio of true fans vs casual fans vs bandwagoners are the same for Kings and Ducks i think. I do love the idea of the Ducks train to SD. It's brilliant. Reminds me of the road games back home in Switzerland. Generally there's a special train(s) usually reserved for the road fans to travel. There would be hundreds in the train already drinking, singing, chanting before we even got to the destination.

I believe they're +15000, not 15000:1. In the betting world +15000 means you win $15K with a $100 bet, so it's more like 150:1.

I would assume local channels will be on Bally Sports and KDOC. They usually announce the local tv schedules much closer to the start of the season. The ESPN+ feeds would be blacked-out on our end I believe--let me know if I'm wrong here.

The good thing is that it's only 3x3 inches. At the same time from my perspective when I watch NHL and European hockey (Swiss League), while the Swiss League has overly colorful jerseys with bunch of ads, the NHL has 6 min of commercial breaks per period. We'll get the annoyance of seeing a 3x3 inch patch here, while a Swiss person gets annoyed to have to watch commercials during a hockey game like it's a tv show. Yea I get that we'll be irritated seeing ads when we buy new jerseys, but at same time we've been accustomed to have commercial breaks during hockey for 30+ years. For me (and when I have guests from Switzerland visiting), it was odd that there were that many commercial breaks in hockey when I moved to SoCal 25 years ago.

4.5M

To be clear, he played in the 2nd division of Swiss hockey. He has size and grit, and captained the U18 Canada team. So at least we have character and leadership. On a personal note, his dad played for Rapperswil in the Swiss league, which is my team back home....so that's a cool connection for me.

Yep. We keep ignoring all of these additional picks and prospects they got from the background deals. Picks and prospect they were able to use to make them a stronger team by flipping them for assets such as Stastny, Pacioretty, Stone, Martinez, etc. They were in position in 2017 to build for the future.

If he's happy with the status quo, it will be a very tough 2-3 years as Ducks fans. We're not a team on the cusp of being a playoff team....we're far from it, and have been far from it for 2 years. I didn't expect them to add a big name player or even a roster player by any means today. But I did hope for a couple trades that would give them the best financial situation going into the summer to make important moves.

We've had dumb-dumb general managing our team for a decade. nothing looks stupid when compared to his decision making.

He was 2 years removed from a 50 goal season and Hart Trophy season. Bob had to pay him a high salary or he would likely would have been looking elsewhere. And Ducks fans would have been angry at the time had that happened. I can guarantee this ducks community would have be irate had Bob let Perry walk at the time. The writing was on the wall when hockey shifted to pure speed game around 2015. Perry never adapted to the modern game. Bob should have predicted what made perry great in the 2007-2013 era of hockey wouldnt work out in the future (I know I did). Shouldve traded him when he still had value... should've done it after 2016/2017 season.

ah gotcha. misinterpreted "following season" with the year after the Hawks series.

They got eliminated in the first round that year against Nashville, not the conference finals. When they lost in the conf finals it was under Carlyle the year after. The reason Boudreau got the pink slip is because it was the 4th season in a row they got eliminated with 3-2 leads in the series, and game 7 being at home.

Unfortunately with the 2021 playoff structure, one of those C+ teams will make it to the final four.

I hope you all understand tv timeouts are pretty much the invention of north american pro sports for more ad revenue. There is no tv timeout outside of north american leagues. so i find it interesting that we gripe about helmets having advertisement , and are content to have 6 minutes of forced timeout per period bc we're all just used to it. i personally enjoy games without tv timeouts and fluid play.

I follow the Swiss league (Swiss guy who's lived in SoCal for 24 yrs). Joe Thornton has ended his preseason contract with Davos today and traveling to Toronto asap. That tells me that the NHL season will likely start as we've heard rumored over the last few days. My guess is the Jan 3 training camp is a go. Thornton was likely asked to leave today so that he can quarantine for 14 days before camp.

NBC has the rights to the Olympics so pretty much 16-24 hrs of their daily slate will be fllled up with various events in the Olympics. There is no timeslot for playoff games. The Olympics has viewership of tens of millions a day versus a couple million in the Stanley Cup. You can do the math what tv execs would rather show in July.

E.....S....P....N? What is that? Just kidding. Here's the link. https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/29782402/what-hearing-2020-21-nhl-season

Eric Stephens was being sarcastic. There's another draw for the #1 pick. He's just saying that teams like Hawks or Oilers can get #1 pick to show how dumb this lottery was.

It's his 3rd suspension i believe. That was the major factor i'm guessing. Moreso than the fact that Ellis was hurt.

I enjoy these european preseason games. Very nostalgic seeing the atmosphere in hockey games. I've lived in the States for over 20 years but I make sure to go to at least one hockey game whenever i visit family in Switzerland. Despite 5-7k fans, the crowd noise always seems much more amplified than the 17k here in the NHL. I'm not bashing crowd noise and be a euro-snob...please do not misconstrue this post. Just sharing how great it is to see it on NHL network.