General Hockey Talk - Injuries, signings, factoids + other news from around the league

Tippett fired in Edmonton.

Of course coaching is the problem. Nothing to do with their inability to develop talent, draft properly or make proper trades.

Nothing to see! Move along!

Can’t wait till their stars enter FA.

Tippet's biggest problem was he couldn't make a timely save.

Tammi Granato named AGM in Vancouver. She's a Concordia alum, like yours truly.

Nothing makes sense in Edmonton. Years of Chiarelli decimated this team and they have zero to show for it. In the offseason they 1000% need to address goaltending. And those Nurse and Hyman contracts are going to hurt. Similar to Montreal they can't rebuild and it'll be hard to get better.

Interesting speculation about Vegas placing Stone and his $9.5M on LTIR until the end of the season (shades of Kucherov and TB being "$18M over the cap"). His back has been bothering him off and on even prior to this season. This would be enough for them to be cap compliant with Eichel in the lineup and they can figure something out in the off-season.

Nice trade for Calgary. They didn't give up anyone of consequence. Heineman was a 2nd rd pick and is having a decent season in the SHL. 8th in team scoring with 16 points. Max Veronneau leads his teams with 43 points! The 1st is all Calgary really gave up and to get a bona fide scorer signed long-term at that cap hit is totally worth giving up a 20th+ overall pick. Well done, Flames

The Purge has begun.

One of those trades that looks like a haul for Montreal but when you look at it piece by piece Calgary is definitely the winner

Habs bring in Vinny Lecavalier as special advisor to hockey ops. Also brought in Nick Bobrov as co-director of amateur scouting.

So the Habs beat Toronto last night. Are the Leafs in trouble? All these third period collapses and not being able to beat the bottom-feeders. Any team who forechecks hard is going to beat them. If the playoffs were to start today they play Tampa in the first round. Yikes

Third period collapses? They were down 0-5 and actually made it interesting scoring 2 quick ones in the third.

I know it was mostly toungue-in-cheek but I saw MSL for Jack Adams, Montemb-NO and "Goal" Caufield on twitter last night.

Sure, Caufield has 5 goals in 7 games this month, but let's not forget that he had 1 goal in October-November-December-January, combined.

DefenceWinsChampionships wrote:So the Habs beat Toronto last night. Are the Leafs in trouble? All these third period collapses and not being able to beat the bottom-feeders. Any team who forechecks hard is going to beat them. If the playoffs were to start today they play Tampa in the first round. Yikes

When you say "are they in trouble?" what do you mean exactly? The rest of the regular season is quite meaningless in the Eastern Conference, and the Leafs are always in trouble the moment the playoffs start. It will be interesting to see what they do at the trade deadline.

Leafs lost again, to Columbus, in OT. Matthews had 11 SOG! They might end up regretting getting rid of Andersen. Then, again, he never did much for them in the post season.

So Avery, 41, signs with an ECHL team

what do we think this is all about?
Bad investment/out of money? Needs to be talked about? it's a little puzzling.

I know there was a lot of noise when Brashear ended up serving people at a Tim Horton in Quebec City.

tim1_2 wrote:

DefenceWinsChampionships wrote:So the Habs beat Toronto last night. Are the Leafs in trouble? All these third period collapses and not being able to beat the bottom-feeders. Any team who forechecks hard is going to beat them. If the playoffs were to start today they play Tampa in the first round. Yikes

When you say "are they in trouble?" what do you mean exactly?  The rest of the regular season is quite meaningless in the Eastern Conference, and the Leafs are always in trouble the moment the playoffs start.  It will be interesting to see what they do at the trade deadline.

Three straight losses, 4 wins in their last 10, and before this bad stretch they were blowing huge leads. Their goaltending has also been really bad and now Muzzin is hurt. They continue to lose to bad teams as their skill is consistently overshadowed by other teams' forececk and harder work. Imo it's another first rd exit. Matthews is a UFA after two more seasons too.

Good God they almost blew a 7-1 lead going into the third period. I doubt they will win too many games 10-7 in the playoffs. Detroit came back to make it 6-7 and were on a power play. Leafs scored a shortie to make it 8-6 but the Wings scored another. Total barn burner.

wprager wrote:Good God they almost blew a 7-1 lead going into the third period.  I doubt they will win too many games 10-7 in the playoffs.  Detroit came back to make it 6-7 and were on a power play.  Leafs scored a shortie to make it 8-6 but the Wings scored another.  Total barn burner.  

Campbell and Leafs defense not cutting it. Mrazek keeps having injury issues. Can't see the Leafs going on a deep run. They're in trouble