2009 NHL off-season trades, rumours, draft thread

Hitler is back and this time he's ranting about Dany Heatley. Funny stuff.

 

and it didn't change the way he coached in Minnesota. I doubt he'll change in New Jersey. To be fair, his teams in Minnesota weren't exactly loaded with talent. He chokes the life out of a game.

 

Always funny.

"That prick makes Yashin look like Santa Claus"

and "One of you can have my 12 game pack".

 

How do they plan on signing Kane and Toews? Signing Huet to that deal was up there with Campbell.

 

They're going to salary dump a couple good wingers next offseason, probably at least two of Sharp, Byfuglien and Versteeg.

That'll leave them with enough room to resign those guys.

 

Which makes his other signings even more curious. There seems to be no forsight. That's a lot of depth to lose.

 

They've got a ton of winger depth, both at the NHL level and strong prospects. Even losing Sharp and Versteeg would leave them with Kane, Hossa, Byfuglien and Ladd as the wingers on their top 2 lines. That's pretty darn good.

The Campbell signing was a disaster, Huet is probably a disaster, but the Hossa deal was a calculated risk in which they get one year of an amazing team and hope/assume that their farm depth can save them when they have to start dumping.

 

Byfuglien and Ladd I would not count on as top 2 wingers over a long period of time. If you want one year of an amazing team you'd better get a goalie. Hossa is 31, so we all know he won't see the last 4 years of this contract since he is getting 59.3 mill over the first 8 years. So you will have him until he is 39. I don't think it's awful but I think the Hawks could have allocated their money better. This team does not have trouble scoring.
The cap will also go down next year so it'll be even tougher for the hawks, although there's always an idiot GM that is willing to take on some of these absurd contracts that other GM's have signed. See Boob Gainey in Montreal with Gomez

 

This may be much ado about splitting hairs, but Tallon was not outright canned, he has been reassigned to Sr. Advisor of Hockey Opperations.

I still stand by this being more of a move to make way for Bowman than to axe him for the RFA mess.

 

Well that's an exceptionally bad idea.

 

End of the day he took them from being a completely morbund franchise to one of the most exciting up and coming teams in the league that made it all the way to the conference finals this year. Usually GMs are given some actual time to see if their contract signings pan out or not. This was a pre-meditated move that was going to happen regardless of what happened during the major signing period.

 

I understand all of that. My point is that it's a really bad idea to keep him around after canning him in order to give Bowman's kid the GM job. There's no way that will be a comfortable working relationship.