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2023 Offseason Trades & Signings

I genuinely thought he was coming back for one last season. Big blow to the Bruins. If Krejci does the same, they'll be taking quite the hit.
 
Hated him as a Bruin but always liked having him on Team Canada. Just a good at everything player.
 
Nik said:
Hated him as a Bruin but always liked having him on Team Canada. Just a good at everything player.

Also just a genuinely good person outside of hockey. The league can always use more people like him.

But still thank god.
 
respect-hat.gif
 
I think it's somewhat interesting to point out that despite the Bruins being one of the poster boys for the whole "stars need to take less if you want to win" mentality, they didn't really win all that much with that.

They had Bergeron on his deal at $6.875mil for 8 seasons starting in 14/15, and then $5mil last season. They also of course had Marchand and Pastra on great below market rates for a big chunk of that time too. In those 9 seasons they had 0 cups, went past the 2nd round just once, 6 total playoff series victories, lost in the 1st round 3 times, and missed the playoffs twice.

Not sure I have a specific point here. I guess it's just that winning is hard. Even a team that generally consistently had great rosters and goaltending and coaching and their best players on below market rates didn't get enough bounces to go their way over the course of 9 seasons to win a Cup, and they only got close once.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Not sure I have a specific point here. I guess it's just that winning is hard. Even a team that generally consistently had great rosters and goaltending and coaching and their best players on below market rates didn't get enough bounces to go their way over the course of 9 seasons to win a Cup, and they only got close once.

I also think, to some extent, it's a sign that maybe that group in Boston wasjust a hair below the level you probably want your best players to be at in order to win a cup. It's not impossible, Vegas and St. Louis managed, but I think if you look at the teams that really did it like Pittsburgh or Chicago or Tampa then I think you kind of have to say that the trio in Boston probably wasn't quite that good.

This is maybe just a different way of saying "Winning is Hard" but operating with the idea that goaltending tends to be a crapshoot I think the top players on those teams(and Colorado last year) had that little extra something of a MVP candidate sort of guy year-in and year-out that the Boston trio never really managed.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
I think it's somewhat interesting to point out that despite the Bruins being one of the poster boys for the whole "stars need to take less if you want to win" mentality, they didn't really win all that much with that.

They had Bergeron on his deal at $6.875mil for 8 seasons starting in 14/15, and then $5mil last season. They also of course had Marchand and Pastra on great below market rates for a big chunk of that time too. In those 9 seasons they had 0 cups, went past the 2nd round just once, 6 total playoff series victories, lost in the 1st round 3 times, and missed the playoffs twice.

Not sure I have a specific point here. I guess it's just that winning is hard. Even a team that generally consistently had great rosters and goaltending and coaching and their best players on below market rates didn't get enough bounces to go their way over the course of 9 seasons to win a Cup, and they only got close once.

I think of the Leafs '67 Cup or the Habs in '86 or '93 as examples.
They didn't have the best teams nor the best elite players.
But they got a parade.

I've mentioned Islanders GM Bill Torrey talking about his championship teams. There was a great collection of talent. BUT according to Bill, they stayed healthy. AND according to Bill, they had luck with calls and bounces.

I think that luck part is even truer today. There are a lot more teams. The NHL cap system has significantly increased parity to the extent many feel no one will win 4 Cups in a row like the Islanders did because they won't be able to hold the team together due to salary pressures from prior Cup winning seasons.

It used to be that you needed a pretty good goalie. Goaltending remains a critical position. But it seems to be less predictable now. Above average guys seem to be able to get hot enough for a couple of rounds to win it. I don't know precisely what it is. I do not understand the unpredictability of the position any more.

It is pretty rare to have the 25% or higher chance the Bruins were given last season to win a Cup - just before the playoffs. Boom! Out in the first round. Florida squeaks in and goes to the finals. 2006 Edmonton -13th place team went to the finals - Roloson's knee injury is cited a key reason they lost to Carolina. Countless upsets in the history of the game.

Next year, the Leafs might not be able to cobble together a roster on paper that seems as good as the one in this years playoffs ... and yet they might go deeper.

I'm grateful the Leafs are good enough for some sort of a credible shot at winning a Cup.
 
https://twitter.com/GMillerTSN/status/1683844293851598848

I liked the old compensatory pick system. Pretty crazy that the 2003 draft saw not just Bergeron get selected with a compensatory 2nd rounder but also Shea Weber for Nashville.
 
Bill_Berg_is_less_sad said:
Bender said:
Will be really odd seeing Tarasenko in a Sens jersey.

It's odd seeing anyone choose to play for an organization that has a giant zero for a logo and a GM who most proud of the fact that they are indeed a team.

https://twitter.com/senators/status/1684699962196508672
 
https://twitter.com/iyer_prashanth/status/1686038694250090497

I do wonder how low a team would need to file or how high a player would need to file for an arbitrator to think "this request is genuinely being done in bad faith". Like the mid-point in the Terry case is $6.25mil, and odds are he'll almost certainly get around that.

But if Terry's camp said "screw it, we're going to argue that he's a $10mil player" the mid-point suddenly jumps to $7.25mil. Would an arbitrator just see that as a standard "high ask" and go along with it or do they finally step in and say "that's totally unreasonable, we're siding even closer to the team".
 
The bad faith request still needs to be backed with statistical arguments, or else it'd be ignored. Like Terry's agent trying to demonstrate he has a reasonable comparable in Mitch Marner's 10+M would be laughed out and the arbitrator would really only hear the team side.

I think the arbitrator usually splits the ask because both sides have decent arguments for their interpretations of the results. Terry posted 37 goals in 75 games in 2021-22 (40+G pace, 16% of his team's total goal output), so I'm expecting that to be carrying a lot of the load in the 8M ask.
 
herman said:
The bad faith request still needs to be backed with statistical arguments, or else it'd be ignored. Like Terry's agent trying to demonstrate he has a reasonable comparable in Mitch Marner's 10+M would be laughed out and the arbitrator would really only hear the team side.

I think the arbitrator usually splits the ask because both sides have decent arguments for their interpretations of the results. Terry posted 37 goals in 75 games in 2021-22 (40+G pace, 16% of his team's total goal output), so I'm expecting that to be carrying a lot of the load in the 8M ask.

That's not entirely accurate. The arbitrator would have the discretion to apply as much weight to an argument as it wants.
 
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