PrimeNumber

This entire bill is an alarmist, the sky is falling reactionary bill. It's not as bad as Harper wants you to think it is. The bad men won't get you. I promise.

Sounds a lot like what was happening in some middle eastern countries, like Egypt, during the Arab Spring with their anti-protest laws. We all know how that ended up. Maybe we can get a million person march against Harper going. Wouldn't that be great?

Lupul made some interesting points about the challenges Toronto faces with a complete rebuild. He raises some great points about how a complete rebuild has not worked for Edmonton. He has a good point that you absolutely need good, experienced players to help the rookies learn the craft of the NHL and not have as much pressure on them early on in their career. Drafting and Development is the key here and Edmonton has learned that the hard way first hand. There is a reason Detroit has a playoff streak going and why they consistently Draft great players well into the 4th-5th rounds. What the leafs need is some great scouts and some key development coaches. take it slow and don't rush anything. But keep some solid veteran players so the youngsters they bring in don't have to shoulder a heavy workload right from the get go.

Yes it's definitely worth more than winning in OT. You should be rewarded for scoring more goals then the other team. Not scoring more goals than the other team after you tied. I am for giving an extra point for a team that wins 5-1 in regulation over a team that wins 4-3 in shootout. A win is better than a tie/win. The west is tight the east is pretty much decided.

True! There's also a chance that the 14th ranked team gets the 1st round pick as well. A small chance but a chance none the less. I've always thought that the NHL should bring in a Draft Playoff Format. Currently there are 14 teams that do not make the playoffs. These 14 teams should have a "mini" playoffs so to speak. Maybe a best of 3 or 5. Short enough that it's over well before the actual Stanley Cup playoffs. Keeps all teams revenue flowing and allows fans of teams whom aren't in the playoffs to continue watching hockey. The winning team of the Draft Playoffs now has the 1st pick in the upcoming draft. The remaining picks are in order of regular season standings. It keeps the league competitive for that 1st pick rather than tanking for it. You could even give the 2nd pick to the runner up. Rewarding competitiveness is better than rewarding failure I find. The last place team in the standings still gets the 3rd pick this way, provided they didn't make it to the finals of the Draft Playoffs of course.

I also think the 4v4 5 minute OT followed by shootout should be replaced by a 3v3 10 minute OT. The NHLPA is against it but it eliminates the shootout. Which I'm all for.

I agree with BubberMiley the points system should be Points System Regulation Win = 3 points Overtime Win = 2 points Overtime Loss = 1 Point Regulation Loss = 0 Points We magically create an extra point in overtime for the losing team. If a team wins in regulation they should be rewarded that extra point for their effort. It would make playoff races pretty interesting. Other leagues in Europe use this system, as well as the IIHF in international play. So we know it works. It really is a superior point system.

Buffalo is well equiped with anti-tank missiles. Good luck. They're rolling out the entire fleet now

Shady is right. The kids has played 169 games as of today. Two full 82 game seasons is only 164. The kid has literally just barely played his second full NHL season in terms of games and has 74 points on a terrible team. By camparison Nathan Mckinnon has played 139 games on a better team and has 95 points which is roughly a .25 more points per game pace than Yakupov. Would you consider him a bust? Edmonton will sign Yakupov to a $3 mill most likely 3 year deal, I doubt they bridge him. To risky and there's no way he goes for a 2 way deal. At this point he's not a bust but he hasn't proved himself. It's far to early. Saying a player sucks because they don't turn it on until the later part of the season is just silly. The Ovechkin's (not this year) and Iginla's of the world say hello to you Overthere. Some guys are just late season scorers weather they are making a playoff run or not.

I wouldn't go that far, not yet. That 1999 draft was probably the worst draft class in history . Vancouver absolutely stole the only two legitimate stars in that draft by a crazy long shot. There are a few others later on but wow.. There is no way Yakupov can be worse than Stefan or Dipietro or Daigle. They just rushed his development, like Edmonton always does. When you look at the shortened season when he was rookie 31 points in 48 games is not so bad. Considering how terrible his team is. I almost guarantee you if you get this kid on a different team he does far better. I personally would have left him in the AHL for a bit but of course most people sitting in their living rooms have a better clue what to do than Edmontons management.

Yeah. Leafs fans can dream on but Babcock is not risking his record to help out across the pond. If I'm him I try and stay in Detroit. If I have to go elsewhere I'm thinking it's time to go to give the Western Conference a try. I'm not him though so I have no idea what he's thinking.

Put yourself in his shoes. You can't make someone stick around that doesn't want to be there, no matter what you offer. He couldn't be happier in Nashville, I don't blame him.

More or less. The leafs figure they can add Jokinen as an extra to get a trade done if it may be lacking in return for the other team. The pick should land them someone like Daniel Sprong, Colin White or Brock Boeser. All of whom are projected to go late 1st round. Any of those 3 could easily be a top 6 forward if they are developed in the right fashion. Toronto will be having a slow rebuild but I think getting as many 1st round picks in this draft as possible puts them in a good spot about 2-3 years from now. Especially if they manage to land a top 3 pick in the draft. If they get McDavid, who will attract free agents, they could be back into playoff contention within 2 years. I think they should keep Bernier, sell high in the off season on Kessel and Phanuef to shed those big contracts to teams who aren't lucky enough to grab anything in free agency and hold off until next years free agent pool which is much deeper. That's what I'd do.

They may be the richest but they also have the longest current history of failure in the league. They have a 46, soon to be 47 season drought since winning a cup. Some players aren't just about money, some actually want a chance to win a cup right now. If they don't trade Franson and he hits free agency he more than likely signs with a top 15 team, most of which will pay him well enough to be better than anything Toronto can offer. They got a late 1st round pick in quite possibly the deepest draft in modern NHL history. A high 2nd round pick could easily bring about a future top 6 forward or top 4 defencemen and Jokinen will without a doubt be included in a trade for more prospects and picks before the deadline. Basically it's Franson for a 1st Santorelli for Jokinen + Leipsic From an outsiders perspective it works for both parties. The leafs officially enter the McDavid playoffs and get a decent return for players that did not want to be resigned. Santorelli wasn't worth much and they wanted a 1st for Franson. They got what they wanted. Nashville looks scary now though. Best D-core in the entire league. They have the depth and goaltending to go deep in the playoffs now.

Basically they are trading away two players that are Unrestricted Free Agents (UFA) at the end of the season, have value, and are not going to be resigning with Toronto. They'd rather get something in return for their departure than nothing at all come July 1st. and given that they aren't really looking to win many games at this point, it's a great return. Jokinen was basically just a cap dump for the Preds. Chances are Toronto includes him in a trade by the deadline. The prospect isn't overly great but he's a small scoring winger, which is big for his size and can check well, he projects as a top 9 forward. Franson is great but there is no way he's staying in Toronto after this season, he's shown his worth to the league so he would have had better offers elsewhere.

I think once the deadline gets closer we will see a ton of deals from Buffalo, Arizona, Toronto, New Jersey and Carolina. All of them are looking to improve on their chances of playing poorly while maintaining effort. Buffalo seems to have anti-tank guns though. It's going to be pretty hard to "catch" up to them. I'd like to see McDavid go to Buffalo or Toronto, given that he's from the area and being closer to family and friends might help his development. I like the thought of Eichel going to New Jersey that team needs some youth and fast plus again he won't be that far from his hometown. I imagine NJ trades Jagr at the deadline so they should get a prospect in return, adding Eichel to the mix can really turn this team around given the experience they have on the roster. Edmonton could use Hanifin the most, they tried the offence first technique and it hasn't worked for them. They should be trying to build from the defence forward now. Hanifin is NHL ready and next year Nurse will be on the roster full time I think so as long as they find a goalie. They could be sporting a better team. Auston Matthews is the highest rated prospect in next years draft and I hope he goes to Arizona which is why I'm hoping Arizona picks out of the top 3 this year. The kid if from Arizona and could really do wonders for the game in that area. I think more people would go to games to see the hometown hero. That's just my $0.02.

Well we do need Winnik to finish out the top 9... Re-do. Three way trade.

It's unfortunate that he developed into that kind of person. He had such potential. There is a reason he was on the 3rd line and it's because everyone else on the left side, Ladd and Perreault, were contributing more to scoring than he was. Scoring is what he was drafted for and is probably one of the reasons he thinks so highly of himself. (1 - 30 goal season) While he can provide a physical presence and throws a hard punch that's not what he was payed to do. There many players that can bring that style to a game and score 15-20 goals a season for much less than $5 mil a season. Kane was a 4th overall pick (2009) but ended up playing on a 3rd line, while not doing what he was drafted and signed to do. Plus with everything that happened he wasn't going to play in Winnipeg again anyways. The Jet's management looked at the situation and said let's get the best return from him possible. Bogosian was a 3rd overall pick (2008) in the same year Myers went 12th overall (2008). But hadn't developed into the player we had hoped while playing top pairing minutes with arguably the most responsible defencemen (Enstrom) on the Jets blueline. Myers had been playing top line minutes with terrible partners, on a downward trend from his rookie season, all while the Sabres team as a collective was on a downward trend. He will now play with the most defensively responsible blue liner on the Jets (Enstrom) while having sheltered minutes to help his game along at a slower pace. We can safely call the Bogo-Myers deal a wash when you look at the rest Winnipeg got a 3rd line Rental, who is a Minnesota native on a team with many Minnesota natives that he has played with internationally. I think he resigns. He also has value for the rest of the year. Then we get a "B" level agitating scorer in Lemieux, Buffalo's top AHL scorer in Armia and a 1st round pick for Kane, plus a toss in Goalie prospect that had a very slim chance of getting a chance. When it first looked like Kane was on the way out, the hope was for a return that included a first, a prospect and a roster player. The Jets got that, and an additional prospect. It also created more cap space for future moves. Chevy did a bang up job!

I think it had more to do with stuff like this... or this apparently he is very arrogant to fans and teammates and has made tweets which have been deleted and comments heard by others about how much he hates playing for the Jets. The tracksuit thing and the subsequent Byfuglien retaliation was just the straw that broke the camels back. His lone wolf style of play may get him goals but he will never be the leader that Buffalo is hoping he will be unless he turns his attitude around. He thinks pretty highly of himself. Guys like this can be a poison to team chemistry.

He gets cheaper, though. See post above. Even if he only ends up being average his salary keeps getting cheaper. Which opens up some nice cap space down the road for the Jets.

The beauty of the Myers deal is he progressively gets cheaper. He signed his deal before the new CBA so he got a top heavy 1st year of $10,000,000 and $6 million in the following year. In 2014-15 and 2015-16, he will receive $5 million each season, followed by a 2016-2017 salary of $4 million, a 2017-2018 salary of $3.5 million and a 2018-2019 salary of $3 million. So the Jets have Myers for 4.5 years at a total of about $18 million. Which is a much better deal than Bogosian's $5 million a year for roughly the same amount of time.

Or a trade chip, the Jets weren't the only team interested in Myers. Chevy might not be done yet.

He just needs to play a complete two-way game, we have many players who aren't overly physical but they mostly make up for it with their defence. Looking at the roster chart it seems they have Stafford on the 2nd line at left wing. He should be getting some good minutes tonight. We'll see what they're made of against a really good Nashville team with Rinne between the pipes. Weber is out apparantly for some reason? So that helps.

I think so, he'll be playing a smaller role with more sheltered minutes and he will be playing with Toby Enstrom who can definitely teach him a thing or two as he adjusts to Winnipeg's system. He will probably get some powerplay time on the second unit as well. We shall see tonight! Where they put Stafford, I have no idea. 2nd, or 3rd line? He can play either wing so I'm curious what will happen come game time.

I I'll admit Chara had his breakout season at 26 but he was nowhere near an elite defencemen until his 30's. Like I said simply putting up points doesn't make someone an elite player, see phil kessel. I never said Myers was elite but hockey is not a one man game, not now. Having new surroundings and going from a basement team to a playoff contender can change a player and having better team mates for some can make a world of difference, see the resurgence of Dubnyk in Minnesota or Perron in Pittsburgh. You're making the same argument for Kane when and if he gets to play with Mcdavid or Eichel. I see Kane as one dimensional, he's a bit of a diva as well. If he changes his entire game he may do well but at this time the trade puts Winnipeg into heavy contender status. Buffalo still has a long way to go. I'm sure if you look at our record with and without Kane this season its probably not any different.