Author Topic: NHL Offseason 2012  (Read 21724 times)

Offline Morgbug

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NHL Offseason 2012
« on: June 21, 2012, 08:18 PM »
Wild come to Winnipeg next year twice.  One exhibition, one regular season (January 4). 

Oh yeah, regular season schedule came out today.  Here's hoping no lockout because we have Hawks and Wings both in October. 
« Last Edit: April 26, 2013, 10:48 AM by Jeff »
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Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2012, 09:45 AM »
I'm not even looking at the schedules until they get the lockout/contract figured out... :(


I will talk about the Draft tonight though...  always fun to see what happens.  Lots of reports that we are playing it safe and picking a Dman, but the Wild seems to love Finns and I would not be surprised to see them go for Teranvainin or even taking a chance on one of the Russians should they slip to us at #7. 

Jesse, any odds on you guys trading Staal?  Sounds like he's tired of being a #3 C and ready to move on...  who passes on a ten-year $60mil deal?  Someone ready to go be a #1 center somewhere else I guess...  anyway, lots of people around here seem to think we're really kicking the tires on a trade for him, also sounds like he's interested in hanging with his bro in Carolina?
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2012, 09:29 PM »
Not thrilled with our pick at #9 - Trouba.  I'm sure he'll end up being a very solid D but that's not really what we needed.  I'm now expecting Forsberg to be ROY since we passed on him.  ::)

The rumours about Staal were true with him wanting to play with his brother.  Wow.  Great for Carolina but not sure it was actually the right move for him. 
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Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2012, 10:35 PM »
I was surprised you guys went that route too, but like you said he should be a solid D in a few years.

I was very happy with our pick of Dumba.  Great pick for the Wild.  Exactly what they need - punch on the blue line to go with all those young forwards we have coming up. 

And Brent, I still love the fact that we are the kind of hockey nerds who sit around on a Friday night watching the NHL draft. :P
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Offline Jesse James

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2012, 11:53 PM »
I was sitting in bed on my aviation reding it on tqitter... :x

Knew staal was gone once he turned down 10 years.  Won a cup with him n knew we couldn't hav forever.  Interesting trade rumors here r a lot of parise talk.  Boos o Philly n wash gms were fun. ;D

D stacking here...  Tryin move Martin too by all accounts.  Tuf to do tho
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2012, 10:08 PM »
And Brent, I still love the fact that we are the kind of hockey nerds who sit around on a Friday night watching the NHL draft. :P

Was fired up all week for the draft, reading all sorts of stuff.  Went out to a bar to watch the first fifteen picks.  Much fun. 

Just need the CBA done, sign Kane and Pavelec and the world is a rosy place again.  With the schedule out, I'm itching to get the draft done for our season ticket group.  Wings, Hawks and Nucks are in town this year as they weren't last year.  I assume we'll move to the west next season so we'll see them more, but there are a bunch of guys on the Wings I'm not sure how long they'll play, so that's my first pick.  Pens are right up there as I didn't see them last year though it wasn't as much of a blow as Crosby wasn't playing. 

Ecstatic about the move to the division we'll be in as well, so long as it stays that way.  Hawks and Wings are great, Blues should be exciting.  Columbus should mean we won't be last and I always liked the North Stars.  I think the Wild is a natural rivalry so those will be great games too and probably lead to road trips for us as well. 

I'm better with the Trouba pick today.  Jets very clearly went after size (and nothing but size?) in this draft.  With the 2013 draft looking like it's loaded with more quality picks we can wait for a forward.  Plus we still aren't that good so we should be top ten and maybe a top five pick next year. 

Really curious though to see what happens with Forsberg going forward.  It's not like passing on Couturier again but still gotta wonder.  Would have liked Faksa as well and I wonder what happens with Grigorenko too.  Nice first round for Buffalo  :o
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Offline TheSon

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2012, 10:16 AM »
It had to be a rough week for Jets fans with the Canes, Caps, and Bolts all seeming to take steps forward, which will make points even harder to come by in the division. ...If they even play this season.

Offline Morgbug

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2012, 08:39 PM »
It had to be a rough week for Jets fans with the Canes, Caps, and Bolts all seeming to take steps forward, which will make points even harder to come by in the division. ...If they even play this season.

None of your comments are incorrect, other than that it was a rough week for Jets fans.  We're still entirely euphoric, except the haters who will never be happy anyway (not you, I mean the local people). 

On deeper reflection the draft was pretty good.  I'm still scared that Forsberg will burn us, but after looking at a pile of stuff on Trouba, I'm pretty excited about the pick.  What changed my mind the most is the following stat about the Jets:

Goals for: 12th
Goals against: 5th last.  Yep, we might need to shore up the D a little. 

Getting a Sutter is always nice and our third round pick is pretty nice too as some drafts had him projected late first round and this is a kid that likes to play around the net and scored the second most goals of anyone drafted yesterday behind Yakupov.  That's pretty sweet.  The other picks are futures with a couple of goalies as long shots, but hey, Lundquist and Rinne were drafted in the 7th and 8th round, so not bad. 

Not happy to see Staal going to Carolina for sure, but whatever.  Wanting to play with your bro is nice, but not really what I'd call a great hockey decision.  Carolina got better for sure for the short term.  Not so worried about the Caps, they should've been better last year anyway and I expect them to continue to underperform until they get the concept of chemistry.  Lighting did underperform last year in a big way and I didn't think we'd be even close to them.  Reality is we are the remnants of the Atlanta Thrashers that were rather mismanaged.  We need to recover from that and we will, given time.  I didn't really think we'd make the playoffs this year (yes, I hoped) and I really don't see it next year either, in part because of what you stated, they got better short term and we didn't really. 

We're building through the draft - something the Jets management said from the get go.  Good young core of players, drafting moderately well and signing our RFAs makes me happy.  Signed Pavelec today, much to the dismay of delusional Leafs fans that wanted him, and while we overpaid for him, I think it sends a nice statement that yeah, Winnipeg is willing to pay for players that fit our system and earn their money.  It wasn't stoopid money like DiPietro or Luongo but it's not a huge cap hit either.  More important than signing Pavelec is the message it sends to potential free agents that this isn't the old Winnipeg Jets.  You play, they'll pay.  That's more important for us than a larger, more desirable market for many of the young kids that want to be famous.  We're down at the bottom with Edmonton, Columbus, Buffalo as places maybe players don't want to go.  So I'm supportive of management making decent offers without being stupid and acquiring players that don't need all the bling that you get in a bigger U.S. city. 
 

Winnipeg is about hockey and we aren't going to make the same mistakes as a Toronto or Philadelphia make in throwing money at questionable players for short term gain.   :)
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Offline TheSon

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #8 on: June 27, 2012, 05:20 PM »
Well said, I can't wait until the CBA is done and the Jets can end up in another division where I can pull for them. Free agency is right around the corner.

Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #9 on: July 1, 2012, 11:45 PM »
Reading a lot of reports tonight that suggest it's either A) Parise/Suter to the Wild or B) Parise = PIT, Suter = DET if they don't sign together...  which probably means B) is the winner. :P

Sounds like Parise will make up his mind tomorrow and maybe Suter by Tuesday...  wait and see, wait and see.
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Offline Scott

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #10 on: July 4, 2012, 12:47 PM »
Sounds like the Wild got Parise and Suter...wow

Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #11 on: July 4, 2012, 05:33 PM »
So, so happy right now.  Can't believe they pulled off snagging both!  :)

And, with PMB and backs contracts up next year, we'll have $10-13 mil to add pieces next year ...
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #12 on: July 4, 2012, 09:06 PM »
I'm excited for you guys in the short term, but holy crap does that tie up cap space for a really, really long time.  If the talk about the new CBA having a lower cap is true, then you better win quick.  Gonna be tough to play against you guys when we move into that division.  Hopefully now you can actually sell out your arena rather than having 3000-4000 Canadians show up.   :P

Still, nice to see guys going 'home' to play.  Maybe we can get Zajac next year and then pick up Toews after 2015-16. 

As a general comment I'm quite floored by what a lot of guys are getting this summer in terms of contract dollars.  No disrespect to Minnesota at all, but I don't see either of those guys being worth 7.5 million per year.  I don't see Olli Jokinen at 4.5 either.  This is hockey and all but ten teams lost money last year.  That's not good. 
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Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #13 on: July 5, 2012, 12:11 AM »
If the talk about the new CBA having a lower cap is true, then you better win quick. 

Tying up a lot of money and second guessing it what we do here (see also: Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, etc) so I'm no stranger to that.  Yeah, a much lower cap could hurt us, but we have so much up-and-coming talent that it might not kill us outright.  Maybe it will.  Dunno I guess.

Either way, it's damn exciting.  Exciting to think that MN is a viable option for FAs, now or in the future.  This kind of stuff would NEVER happen in the NBA, where they run from the cold.  It hardly ever happens in the NFL without a trade-and-sign type thing.  The idea that these guys could have picked Motown and/or Crosby and picked us just gives me warm fuzzies all over.

Defintely drinking a healthy cup of Wild kool-aid today, totally buying what they are selling and not worrying about tomorrow.  What's the worst that could happen?  Not making the playoffs?  I'm Minnesotan, I'm used to that.  :-X
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Online Jeff

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Re: NHL Offseason
« Reply #14 on: July 15, 2012, 11:58 PM »
As a result of the Parise/Suter induced hockey-mania in these parts, we've had record numbers at our development camp scrimmages.  It's like people are so happy with the team's FA signings, they are doing anything they can to show off thier Wild pride.  We had 6500+ at the past Thursday night scrimmage and 7500+ at the scrimmage today. 

And you can count me among those hockey-mad folks.  I took the opportunity to take Kellan (age 2) to watch some free hockey today.  I don't think he'd make it through a 2 hour game, but a one-hour scrimmage was right up his alley.  He is a totally hockey-mad two-year old.  He sat and watched the draft with me and also watched a lot of the playoffs with me too.  He had so much fun watching and was cheering for those kids like they were super-stars.  Here's a couple pics from our day.

Happy to be there...


Really happy to have a bucket of popcorn he didn't have to share with his brothers...


We also used the scrimmage to scope out our new season ticket seats:


Yeah, I said "new season ticket" - I broke down and bought season tickets myself this year instead of just joining in a pool with others.  I figure my family will be good for moving quite a few of the games, so I shouldn't be stuck with a ton of games.  Now, the next step is to make sure the players and owners don't **** everything up and ruin this fall for me.   >:(
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