National Hockey League 2018-2019

It's difficult to feel badly for a team that shows half hearted effort in a SCF G7. That was ugly, but hardly without precedent: (see: Game 2, or several others throughout the post-season).

This really wasn't a case of two teams bringing their best - hats off to the Blues, who did. Bruins ought to be embarrassed this morning, and several seem to be.

As a friend said, "D zone turnovers are self-driven nails."
 
Toronto's drought is not as mind boggling when you dig past the surface. When Harold Ballard owned the team he didn't care if the team won because the games always sold out.

There was an awesome team there in the early/mid 1990s when they were the only team to make the final 4 for 2 years in a row.

Following that era was a corporation run by corporate types so sign every free agent they could and give them no trade clauses & big contracts. This era sent Steen to St Louis.

It looked like the current incarnation started to do things the right way over the past 4 years or so aside from this past season when it looked like they really booted it with the Nylander contract and also had them cut Bozak loose a year ago (he landed in St Louis).
 
Rask probably should have been the CS winner. He was the best player in the series though not in the last game but at least 3 of the goals were pretty much unstoppable. I'm not surprised by our resident B's fan reaction but they did not play poorly in game 7 but Binnington played super and that was the difference. His ability to bounce back from a bad game was very impressive and bodes well for his future. A nice worst to first in the same year though the fact that the Blues were bad early on was actually a bigger shock than that they were good later. They had the skill to be good but it took a coaching change to push the right buttons. Berube should be locked up for a few years unless the Blues go all Caps on him
 
Nick Kypreos (who I generally think is a moron when he is spreading his opinions) picked St Louis at the start of the season. Crazy.

I don't think that we are likely to see as many of the top seeds get eliminated so early again any time soon.
 
And I'm not surprised at an overly simplistic take on a complex game. Binnington played very well, Rask played fine, and the Bruins had a very mediocre game. Errant shots, bad decisions, overpassing, standing around instead of skating hard .... all of their bad habits coalesced.

They had 2 games like that in the Toronto series, 1 in the Columbus series, none vs. Carolina, and at least 2 in the SCF. Just won't get it done.
 
In my opinion, Binnington should have been the MVP. He struggled in game 6, but was otherwise stellar.
 
No, he had several spotty games. The 7-2 I almost consider an outlier; his series was up and down.

Great G7, though.
 
335clone said:
In my opinion, Binnington should have been the MVP. He struggled in game 6, but was otherwise stellar.
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I wouldn't have been surprised had Binnington been awarded MVP...the Blues' offense was so weak that without his stellar play, they could not have won. Many, many big saves and stayed calm throughout. An amazing performance IMO.
 
EK65 just signed an 8 year, $92 million contract to stay in San Jose.

If he recovers from surgery AND can play like he did when he pushed Ottawa deep into the playoffs, it might turn out ok but...
 
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Yeah, I can't see them not bringing him back but as with any decision in hockey, 'at what price?' is a major integer.
 
smorgdonkey said:
Yeah, I can't see them not bringing him back but as with any decision in hockey, 'at what price?' is a major integer.
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His contract last year was pretty modest IIRC something like 1 million (a lot for me and you but not so much for a future HoFer methinks). With the signing of Karlsson the Sharks problems aren't Jumbo but Little Joe and their RFA. They may end up doing a GSW and have a great few players but no depth...and we know how that worked out for them :grin:
 
Yeah, I think Jumbo would skate for the Sharks for free parking and dinner. They need to focus on keeping Pavs and their forwards. Looks like they might deal Dillon & Donskoi, which makes me sad.

Such is the way of pro sports.
 
The Subban deal was pretty much only due to the dollars. I think San Jose has a few dollars issues but they will still probably figure out some way to pay big Joe - little Joe? Well, they will probably have to offer him a pretty big contract.
 
Donskoi's a UFA so keeping him might not have been in the cards anyways. Deal Dillon would be a bit of a mistake IMO. He's a stay at home guy to be paired with either of the 2 non stay at home D's plus he's big and physical enough compared to the other options (Heed, Ryan). Pav had an excellent year scoring wise last year which makes resigning him more difficult. He's a great glue guy but he's also 35 so how much do you think he's got left? There are going to be more deals I think that are $$ only ones given that the cap is a player or 2 less than teams thought it would be
 
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