Since we're officially eliminated from playoffs

feels more like elminated from NHL

I gotta say, I really didn't think your team could be as awful as you all wanted them to be. But they certainly are. So... congrats?

We aren't as bad as our record, got hit pretty hard with injuries:

- Hamhuis missed half the season which neutered our bottom-4 D
- Henrik playing at maybe 70% all season, just enough to not sit out
- Sutter missed 3 quarters of the season which put like 100% of the defensive responsibilities on a 20 YO Horvat who is overwhelmed and had no help from his wingers for the first half of the season
- Edler missed a third of the season and Tanev a quarter, both are out right now which means our defense is a tire-fire

Lots of injuries to important players on bad/shallow teams = lottery. When we were healthy we were pretty much a bubble team for most of the year.

A team like STL went through bad injuries as well but were able to overcome it because of coaching and depth.

This post was edited by LuLer on Mar 26 2016 11:54pm

damn right they are,
icing an AHL team basically, just take out the Sedins with all the injured players this is what our roster looks like

Sedins - Alex Burrows
Sven Baertschi - Bo Horvat - Jake Virtanen
Jared McCann - Linden Vey - Emerson Etem
Chris Higgins - Brendan Gaunce - Grenier

Ben Hutton - Alex Biega
Dan Hamhuis - Nikita Tryamkin
Matt Bartkowski - Andrey Pedan

Ryan Miller
Jacob Markstrom

Bolded ones are pretty much NHL regulars, but way past their prime
rest are pretty much experiments and prospects under 23yrs old

This post was edited by Secksii on Mar 27 2016 01:25am

u jelly?

Thoughts on expansion (assuming we don't sign any significant free-agents):

Unless they make some sort of special clause, next year's expiring UFAs can be left unprotected for the expansion draft and count towards the mandatory minimum of 25% cap teams must leave unprotected.

Miller + Burrows + Higgins = 13M of expiring contracts

Add in Sbisa and a few plugs and we easily hit the 25% mark (74 max x 25% = 18.5).

---

Having little quality depth on our current roster also means we won't have to leave anyone good unprotected, unless we get a few surprising performances from young forwards.

Sedin, Sedin, Hansen, Sutter, Baertschi are likely locks for 5 of the 7 forward protection slots.

That leaves 2 for Dorsett (can't believe I actually have to include him here) Rodin, Granlund, Etem and Gaunce.

I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Hansen and Gaunce are traded and Etem is left unprotected, leaving 3 spots for Dorsett, Rodin and Granlund.

e/ *Might be difficult to trade Gaunce away because teams won't want to acquire fringe prospects that they'll have to use their own protection slots on.

got the Hawks tomorrow, the stealth tank should keep operating smoothly

^^ I'm a dummy, forgot Horvat. Need to protect him too lol.

Lumped him in with McCann, Hutton and Virtanen in my head. Forgot he was a year older.

This post was edited by LuLer on Mar 27 2016 03:42am

this is a huge game to lose... if we somehow win we'll bump up to 6th last