NHL 2018-19 Season
 

Blues sign goalie Chad Johnson

Blues sign Tyler Bozak and David Perron

Blues acquire O'Reilly from Sabres
Sabres get Berglund, Sobotka, Thompson and two draft choices




PUMPED about these moves!!!

Meanwhile in Nashville the only sound appears to be ... crickets.

Tavares to Toronto 7y/$77M

Sigh. Was really hoping he'd end up in San Jose.

Has anyone checked on Maple Leafs to see if he’s OK and hasn’t died of happiness? I really expected there to at least be a page on DGB that is nothing but GIFs of dancing babies interspersed with Wendel Clark’s greatest hits or something by now.

James Neal to Calgary, 5 yrs / $28.75m

Dang.. would have loved to replace Steen with Neal.

My kid is a big Real Deal fan so he's pretty disappointed the Preds didn't bring him back but that length minimizes my disappointment. Not sure I'd want to be in on him til he's 35.

He’s probably currently tied up with the Toronto city council planning the optimal parade route.

Too long of a contract for Vegas so I'm happy with Stasney instead.

I can't believe we signed Perron for 4 years.

Jets had to trade away Joel Armia and two picks just to dump Mason's contract in hopes (apparently) of signing Paul Stastny... only for Vegas to swoop in at the last minute and make an offer the Jets couldn't match. That's a pretty serious stomach punch, but sure adds to the budding rivalry.

Yeah, that was unfortunate. I liked Armia and the puck always seemed to be around him. He was fantastic with the stick, except when he got in close to the net. Then his touch would disappear. He seemed reliable defensively though and was also good on the PK.

It's a tough loss to take when one considers that at the end, Stastney didn't get signed. Hopefully, the extra cap room makes it easier to secure long term deals for Hellebuyck, Morrissey and Trouba (and potentially Laine/Connor).

Hopefully it also opens the door for someone like Petan, Lemieux or Vasalainen.

I watched that video on Thursday, and when I was in Kenora over the weekend we drove by Luby's and sure enough he was there in the chair. So sad.

The Sharks just traded for Erik Karlsson. They gave up a whole boatload of stuff, but wow.

I've heard that they gave up the following:

• Chris Tierney
• Dylan DeMelo
• Josh Norris
• Rudolfs Balcers
• 2020 1st Round Pick
• 2019 2nd Round Pick
• Two Conditional Draft Picks

The best part is the conditional if the Sharks deal Karlsson back out east. Have to include that after Wilson sent Mike Hoffman back to the Sens' division.

Tierney is a 3rd/4th line player, Demelo is a boarderline 3rd pairing guy, Norris and Balcers might not pan out now, but they are good prospects, a first which will probably be mid to late 20's. Absolute steal by Doug Wilson again. As a Sharks fan, i'm stoked. If I was a Sen's fan, how Dorion still has a job is beyond me. Really really bad for them.

It had to be the Sharks. I guess at least it wasn’t the Kings. After Washington got their redemption story out of the way this year, chances the Sharks do the same?

An unbelievably bad deal of this by the Sens, not just because the package sucks (it was always likely to suck once the reality of the situation hit) but the fact that they apparently knew they were rebuilding last February, but chose to not get a better package for Karlsson (and Hoffman) at the deadline but also deliberately chose to pick fourth in this years draft rather than a pick that is very likely to be higher in a much better draft next year with a franchise player at the top.

Dorian is either a liar or completely incompetent. Or Melnyk deliberately held onto Karlsson and the fact that they were rebuilding as long as possible for ticket sales. I guess the third might actually be the most likely option.

I expect a serious championship hangover for the Caps. Hell, it may be a literal hangover given how much they have celebrated since the Cup win. For one year I'm fine with 0-82.

Oh, I am absolutely over the moon for the deal as well.

What a terrible trade for the Sens. 10 cents on the dollar.

Almost as bad, but not quite, as the new third jersey the Jets revealed yesterday:

honestly I like that Jets jersey

That looks like something conjured by a Hollywood prop department when they needed a "generic team jersey"

I think the biggest problem with the jersey is the script logo. It's too plain, and too 'baseball-y'.

Well that ain't good :/

Golden Knights' Paul Stastny could miss two months

I suspect the clock may have struck midnight.

I actually like that jersey, but Jon is spot-on:

This Blues team is a train wreck.

The Devils scored three of the most bizarre own goals you will ever see in a crazy game against the Ducks that is going on right now. 5-4 Ducks with a few minutes left in the game.

Those get successively weirder. The first one is a typical bad luck bounce on a cross-crease pass. Second one is stranger but that stuff happens. Third one... what the hell is Andy Greene thinking??

For you Buffalo fans, I had no idea how great of a player ROR is. The guy busts his ass every night and had one hell of a game winner tonight!

Huge Sabres fan here...

The fact of the matter is that O'Reilly is simply a superb player. Elite faceoff man, great two-way player, solid on the powerplay and above average at even strength. Excellent penalty killer and a very hard worker.

There is only one reason why Buffalo made this trade and it was because the team was losing and O'Reilly was not showing the requisite leadership in the dressing room and in fact, was a detriment in that area. This was all about rolling the dice and hoping for an addition by subtraction type of deal.

In the end, St. Louis made out like bandits, as Berglund and Sobotka are both pretty bad (Berglund just got suspended due to not showing up for a team roadtrip after being a regular scratch) and Tage Thompson is still very raw.

The crazy part is that Buffalo has made enough other moves (the Jeff Skinner trade...winning the draft lottery and the unbelievable Rasmus Dahlin) to more than compensate for O'Reilly's loss and the team is playing great hockey so far. And of course, St. Louis has fallen like a rock toward the bottom of the league, which NO ONE predicted.

Buffalo still gets St. Louis' first round pick next year (they have lottery protection on it so it could be deferred to 2020) and the Sabres will need to strike gold on that pick to even out this trade.

But in the end, St. Louis gets the best player and Buffalo is back to winning hockey games, so maybe everyone wins here.

O'Reilly seems like a good player, but also seems to always play on teams that suck and have dressing room problems. I can't help but wonder if those two things aren't related.

Tage Thompson might be the diamond in the rough, I like his potential. Bergund and Sobotka were like here, take these two off our hands and we will throw in Thompson and a draft pick.


Can't wait to see Buffalo in action, they are playing well!

Playoff hockey is crazy, but the Lightning down 3-0 to Columbus is just mind-blowing to me.

More than any other sport, the NHL season is simply useless in predicting the playoff winners.

So true..

This really always made it hard for me to process hockey as a fan. There seems to be very little year-to-year or season-to-playoff continuity as to which teams are good and which teams aren't. Or at least, much less than the other sports. I can just casually pay attention to the other sports and still have some idea which teams are currently championship contenders and which teams suck. In hockey I have no idea.

The current format seems to have a fair bit to do with the more recent upsets.
Under the current format (in use since 2014) NHL 1st round results by seed

1 vs WC: 4-0, 2-2, 2-2, 3-1, 3-1
2 vs 3: 3-1, 3-1, 3-1, 2-2, 2-2

Reg season point diff of upsets (seeding)
2014: 14, 11, 4
2015: 9, 4,2
2016: 7,3, 4
2017: 15, 1, 7
2018: 1

That means over half (7/13) of the 'upsets' were by teams that were separated by 2 wins or less over an 82 game regular season. (and 60% of the ones in the past four season)

edit to add: As for predictability though, the current MLB format has seen #1 seeds go just 8-6 vs WC teams (vs 14-6 vs NHL 1st vs WC). MLB 2v3 actually favors the underdog 8-6 (vs NHL 2v3 being 13-7 for the favorite).

LETS GO BLUES!!!!!!

LGB!!!

Steve Yzerman is back!!! New Red Wings GM!!

As an Oilers fan who would have loved to have seen Yzerman somehow end up here as the GM, very happy to see him back in Detroit. Just how it should have been really.

LETS GO BLUES!!!!!!!

Blues played quite well, but at the same time the Jets played terrible. What team gets 1 shot in a period of an elimination game?! Something was clearly not quite right with them all year. It will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season.

And they faded down the stretch. Was depth a problem?

Thank you Blues

I honestly don't know what the problem is. Depth was supposed to be a strength. There are rumors of locker room problems, but no one really knows anything. The coaching was suspect at times, with zero adjustments being made all year even though everyone who spent more than 20 minutes watching the team could predict their patterns and movements. Line shuffling was basically the extent of any adjustments, but even then they curiously refused to split up Wheeler and Scheifele despite struggling to find other good pairings and that particular one suffering defensively and also being part of the predictability issue.

They also allowed Laine to play through one of the worst stretches of hockey I've seen an NHL'er play, for months, with no real repercussions in terms of ice time. He was legitimately the worst player on the ice for most of January and February, yet kept getting thrown out there. And while some of it was clearly struggles with confidence, a large portion was also just lack of effort. You can argue that giving him rope to find his way through it is good handling of a young player (and he did find his game again by the playoffs), but you can also argue that it isn't fair to the other 20 guys in the room to allow someone to coast through half a season unchecked.

Ultimately the cap alone is going to force some changes over the summer. Who stays and who goes may tell us something about what management feels the problems may have been. I don't expect Maurice to be let go, but if management does question the coaching I wouldn't be shocked to see one or more assistant's shown the door. From a player perspective some pieces will have to move, so it may be a little hard to know exactly whether any moves are purely market related and which are perhaps a bit more targeted towards the issues that plagued the team this season. But some moves (such as a trade involving Trouba) won't be shocking, whereas if perhaps if someone who is signed long-term or otherwise locked in for a couple more years gets moved out (either along with him or separately) that would be a bit of an eye-opener.

The fucking Sharks keep stringing me along.