Jump to content
Anaheim Ducks Message Board

dtsdlaw

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12,403

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    464

 Content Type 

Everything posted by dtsdlaw

  1. dtsdlaw
    Free agency started on July 13th in 2022, not July 1st. He was signed on the first day of free agency.
  2. dtsdlaw
    The jury is still out on the bolded as far as I’m concerned. Maybe getting Carlsson will make the Lindholm/Rakell trades and last season’s tank job all worthwhile, but I still feel like there’s a good argument to be made that the bleeding could have been stopped right when Verbeek was hired. Instead, Verbeek just kept right on digging, and apparently his plan to get the team out of the even deeper hole that he’s created is to pay Killorn $6.25M until age 37 and Gudas $4M until age 35 while lowballing the team’s young stars.
  3. dtsdlaw
    The reason Verbeek checked the waiver wire everyday last season is because the guys in San Diego demonstrated over and over that they weren't capable of playing good hockey in the AHL, let alone at an NHL level. Hopefully that changes this coming season with some exciting new players and a new coach down here. Last season was awful in San Diego though, and Verbeek has already swapped out almost half of the Gulls roster from the start of last season.
  4. dtsdlaw
    Good post. To the bolded, Kassian told a story in that Kes and Juice podcast about fighting Maroon, who is a good friend of his (and their wives are close). The way he told the story, Maroon was running around slashing guys and generally just being a rat on the ice, so Kassian went after him for a fight to get him to stop. So it's not just about preventing the crushing hits on the stars, it's also about just policing the game and getting guys to stop acting like rats so that the skills guys can play without having their hands constantly slashed. That aspect of the game is not quantifiable, so the goon-haters and fancy stats people rarely ever acknowledge it, but it's still a real thing and is likely exactly what Henrique is referring to when he was lamenting the loss of D-Lo. I tend to think that Rico isn't arguing that Deslauriers will prevent a star player from taking a shoulder on the chin from a blindside hit at center ice, he's arguing more for Deslauriers tamping down the rat-like behavior so the good players can just play.
  5. dtsdlaw
    They can be and they are. The closest we have to legit NHL forward prospects slated to play in San Diego this coming season are Gaucher and maybe Pastujov, and both of those guys are young and haven't even played a single game of professional hockey yet. Maybe a guy like Regenda could be an option, but it sure seems like Verbeek sees something about his game that he doesn't like for this team's future considering that Regenda turns 24 this December. Regenda's TOI dwindled to 3:42, 9:50, 9:57, and 6:15 in his last four games last season before being sent back to San Diego never to be heard from again. I don't think most fans who want to "give the Gulls a chance" realize how little talent we have down there. They're not NHL players.
  6. dtsdlaw
    Oldie but goodie - Zack Kassian on the Kes and Juice podcast
  7. dtsdlaw
    Tracey and Perreault aren't "marinating". They're just not good enough players and they've done nothing to earn an NHL game check. Being picked 27th or 29th doesn't mean you don't have to earn a call up, and neither of those guys have done it. Go watch any Gulls game and you'll understand why they aren't in the NHL.
  8. dtsdlaw
    I love it when fancy stats people treat NHL players like rubes and dismiss everything they say because there isn't a stat to support it. Kassian is bad at hockey. You are 100% correct. I'm not saying he is good. But there are other aspects to Kassian's game that could be useful to a young, developing team - especially the fact that he plays every shift like a giant prick. The league has leaned in heavily towards it being a skill game rather than a face-punching game, but all of the top contenders still rely on that prick element to get them to the top. Tampa - a whole team full of giant pricks. Vegas - prick after prick after prick. Colorado - are there two bigger pricks on the ice than MacKinnon and Landeskog? Crosby and Malkin - both play like giant pricks. Name me a "nice" team that has won a Cup. Or even been past the 2nd round. Why do you think Toronto picked up Domi and Bertuzzi? It's because Marner, Nylander, and Matthews don't know how to be pricks when the situation requries. Heck, even the Ducks best seasons over the past decade were defined by Perry, Kesler, and Getzlaf, all of whom were notorious pricks on the ice. The Ducks have a really "nice" team. And they've been led by one of the nicest coaches in the game for the past four seasons. It's one of the reasons they've sucked so bad. I don't WANT Kassian to be signed to an SPC, but if he is, I will certainly understand why. Verbeek is going to have a job for him, and it won't be to just "protect" Zegras and Terry. It'll be to help push forward the culture shift that Verbeek is trying to impose on this absurdly soft team.
  9. dtsdlaw
    A highly skilled veteran player with more than 800 NHL games and nearly 500 points saying that this type of player is needed is actually evidence. Just not statistical evidence. But not everything has to be quantified with statistics.
  10. dtsdlaw
    Who did you trade Ryan Strome to? Or did you just bury him in the minors as punishment for last season's abysmal performance? Honestly, I am not a fan of Kassian's antics, but at this point Kassian would probably be more useful than Jones or Leason. He skates better than both of those guys, and maybe adding him would mean the 4th line only gets 8-9 mins/game as a true energy line, as opposed to being a featured part of Eakins' offensive strategy the past four seasons.
  11. dtsdlaw
    Agree, sort of. The Lightning went to the SCF in 2015 and the ECF in 2016 before Kucherov signed that bridge deal in October 2016, and then they made it to game 7 of the ECF again in 2018 right before Kucherov signed his 8-year extension on July 10, 2018. So you have to think it might have been easier to set aside any potential hard feelings because of how friggen good that team was at the time. In contrast, if Zegras signs a bridge deal in October with a lower AAV, and then the team continues to struggle throughout the term of that bridge deal, I don't think Kucherov's situation will end up being be that much of a parallel.
  12. dtsdlaw
    FWIW, I tried looking up the latest that Yzerman has ever signed one of his RFAs to see if we could get a read on what Verbeek's timeline might be with Zegras based on his history under Stevie Y, and unfortunately the winner for lateness seems to be Nikita Kucherov signing a 3 x $4.767M bridge deal (at age 23) on October 11, 2016, which was one day before the NHL season started on October 12, 2016. Buckle up! There's no guarantee this contract thing is done before training camp. [sigh]
  13. dtsdlaw
    It wouldn't make any sense to bury him because only $1.15M would be removed from their cap and so $3.85M would still be on their cap. That's not even enough to get them cap compliant. It would make way more sense IMO for the Leafs to just retain 1/2 of his cap hit and trade him so they're at least below the upper cap limit. That said, he's still a good player and he's projected to be a top-4 for them. If they move him, they're creating a hole in their defense that needs to be filled by someone else. Maybe that's why they picked up Benoit, but I can't imagine that a team with Cup aspirations would be super comfortable with removing Brodie and then bumping up Benoit and a 39-year-old Giordano to start the season as their 6/7 defensemen. I would think they'd want another legit NHL-caliber D-man coming back.
  14. dtsdlaw
    Good luck moving all of a $7.5M salary and $5M cap hit without also sending a 1st rounder. Only a few teams have cap space (how many are on his NTC?) and they’re all going to want a really big sweetener. Definitely something more than Liljegren, who apparently is worth less than the Islanders 3rd round pick. You’re also missing the part where Toronto wanted to re-sign Lyubushkin but couldn’t match Buffalo’s $2.75M/season UFA offer because of the flat cap. Toronto wanted him for about $1M less than what Buffalo offered which, interestingly enough, they could now get if Verbeek retained on the deal. Oh, and that rumored trade is laughably unrealistic. Never gonna happen. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
  15. dtsdlaw
    Vatrano was not in my trade offer. Maybe your rebuttal was meant for someone else? Also, I don't follow Toronto and don't know much about Liljegren, but are you suggesting that Toronto would value a 3rd rounder (the Islanders pick) over Liljegren? If that's the case, I'm not even sure Liljegren could be considered a sweetener.
  16. dtsdlaw
    Meh, details! Sheesh. I actually wonder if a guy like Brodie would put Anaheim on his NTC list, since it'd be virtually guaranteed that he'd be traded to a SC contender at the deadline. If the Leafs were to retain 40% and then the Ducks retain another half, some team would be getting TJ Brodie at a $1.5M cap hit (pro-rated) at the trade deadline. A lot of legit Cup contenders would be interested in that. Lyubushkin is also this season's Kulikov. We got him for Minny's 4th (2025) with the hopes that he can be flipped for something better down the road. Whatever Brodie could get at the TDL will be better (likely a LOT better) so Verbeek would be a fool to not make that trade simply because he just got Lyubushkin.
  17. dtsdlaw
    My math says they have to clear only about $1.38M. Their current cap number on Capfriendly includes 14 forwards (including Robertson who is still exempt from waivers) and 3 goalies. What about something like this: Lyubushkin (1/2 retained) + Vaakanainen <---> Brodie (40% retained) + Robertson + 3rd That would add about $3M to the Ducks payroll and give the Leafs about $1.675M in cap relief (plus another $850K if they bury Vaks in the minors), so they would be cap compliant. Brodie is also still a player that we could use, just not at a $7.5M salary. I think we could tolerate him at $4.5M. He's a left-shot who has played the right side a lot with Morgan Reilly, and he could start with Fowler (who is similar to Reilly) on the top pair and then be moved down the lineup to either side if Drysdale or Helleson proves capable of playing big minutes with Fowler. Lyubushkin also played 31 games for the Leafs at the end of the 2021-22 season and I've read in some places that he was pretty decent for them playing with both Reilly and Sandin as a SAH, so I wouldn't be surprised if there would be interest in bringing him back at half of his cap hit. The sweetener on that deal (Robertson + 3rd) feels a bit light to me given how much salary and cap hit we'd be taking on, but I'd do it just for a roll of the dice on Robertson, who seems to have fallen out of favor in Leafs land.
  18. dtsdlaw
    Brodie has a $5M cap hit but is actually due $7.5M in salary (all salary, no signing bonus). We’d be paying him more than we paid Klunkberg last season. That alone makes this a nonstarter for me.
  19. dtsdlaw
    St Louis? They drafted Erik Johnson but he wasn’t on their team for the Cup.
  20. dtsdlaw
    It's not even a 2-way deal! Browsing his splits, it looks like he actually played some of his best hockey against Treliving's team last season. He was a +3 against Calgary and a -32 against the rest of the NHL. lol.
  21. dtsdlaw
    It was the 2020-21 covid season and Zegras played in 24 NHL games that season. The threshhold for accruing an NHL season was reduced from 40 games to 27 games since they only played 56 games that season. He was healthy scratched a couple of times and was also sent back to San Diego so that he couldn't get to 27 games. It was very intentional, and he even made a public comment about it. The organization arguably cost him a lot of money by not letting him play in 3 more NHL games that season. And yet he goes back to New York during the summer. He apparently hasn't even found a barber in SoCal yet...
  22. dtsdlaw
    I think this is likely, but far from a certainty. perry_mvp raises a very good point about Hughes' physical stature and injury history. If he had signed a bridge in 2022, it would have been right after he missed the final 13 games of the season with a knee injury (after having missed 17 games at the beginning of the season with a dislocated shoulder). I have to think his bridge is something like 3 x $7M (with a salary progression of around $3.5M-$7M-$9.5M) given the recent injuries that season. So he'd have been looking at a QO of $9.5M at age 24, but we don't know yet if a guy of his stature and with his propensity for injuries would have been able to stay in the lineup and put up PPG+ numbers for the next two seasons. Also, an 8-year deal at age 24 would have meant that he'd be signing his first UFA contract at age 32, whereas he'll actually be signing his first UFA contract at age 29 thanks to the 8 x $8M contract he signed early on. I tend to think that his next contract will be bigger because he's signing at age 29 than it would have been if he was signing at age 32. Point is though, there's no certainty that he cost himself money. He just didn't bet on himself, so we'll wait to see if that shakes out for or against him over his career.
  23. dtsdlaw
    This is a big assumption. Bob Murray is the one who screwed Zegras out of accruing a professional season towards UFA. And we don't know if Zegras even wants to be here. Zegras could want to force his way out without Verbeek having any ability to stop him.
  24. dtsdlaw
    We also don't know if Zegras even wants to play in Anaheim long term. He might simply not want to be a winger in a small market. Elliotte Friedman also made the point on his podcast this week that Auston Matthews' strategy of signing shorter-term contracts may change the way elite level players do their contracts, and you have to wonder if Zegras (who we all agree is extremely confident) would want to try the same strategy as Matthews and just go for a contract that takes him right to UFA. I'm not sure what that AAV would look like, but if Verbeek isn't buying any UFA years then I'd assume the AAV would be a bit lower.
  25. dtsdlaw
    Thanks! That's kind of how I thought the rule worked, which is what made me ask if it might impact Luneau.
×
×
  • Create New...