buddha

and celebrini has been better, which might sting a little.

he was hyped to be the next sidney crosby and he's fallen well short of that standard. that said, the hype was the problem, not bedard. he may be more like patrick kane, and i'm sure the hawks would take that. besides, they used to call kane a disappointment too

we'll see.

mitchell and harden will hunt duncan all day long.

the bulls are such a waste of an organization. if they had decent ownership they could be dominant. theyre STILL living off mj's legacy. they are putrid and still lead the league in attendance every year and still sell more merch than most teams. if reinsdorf and his investors ever sold the team, they could get billions quite easily.

nuggets a decent bet at that number.

pistons in 6 celtics in 4 knicks over hawks in 6 cavs over raptors in 5 cavs over pistons in 7 celtics over knicks in 6 celtics over cavs in 5

not to get all "gen x nostalgiac" on you, but can you imagine jordan or isiah or bird or magic not wanting to play? not wanting to win? take the all star game, they actually used to try to win the game. how novel. i know this sounds old mannish, but i think its generational. does lebron really care about winning every game? or is he more concerned with brand and "mental health"?

Almost everything about the league's regular season is embarassing nowadays. from marginal players setting records for offense, to teams deliberately playing g-league lineups to lose games, to sitting star players every other night, to the massive blowouts as teams do not care if they win. its a real problem in the nba. the fact that the players do not care enough about the game to play every night is an issue that will haunt the league. i dont know how you fix that. they should give the commish the ability to punish teams for sending out inferior lineups to lose. give it real teeth and not the half-assed measures they use now. in other words, give the commish the ability to take picks away, or to lower the draft odds, or say the team cant pick higher than 8th because of repeat tanking offenses. they can tweak the lottery in ways that will help, but i doubt they have the cojones to do it. make a win "floor". if you dont finish with at least 25 wins, the highest you can pick is 8th. something like that. but make it so teams have to win a certain number of games during the year.

just shuffling the deck chairs. no thanks.

one thing in their favor for a larkin trade is that he's on a really good contract, assuming he doesnt crater. put him as a #2 center on a team and he'll thrive.

i think its more on the talent on the team than mcclleland. lots of fragile players in that locker room, it seems. it could also be that when other teams turned up the heat and started playing hard, the wings cant compete. they may also have been playing through injury. regardless, i think its more on the team than the coach.

if danielson and kasper arent 2 and 3 c next year with cossa in net and asp somewhere on the blue line, then the team is trouble OR theyve been traded for actual nhl talent.

i thought you mentioned a matthews trade at some point. my bad. i often wonder if detroit has shopped its prospects and people dont want them (other than edvinsson)? the "no one wanted danielson" rumors were all over the place. if true, it says a lot about detroit's drafting the last few years.

yzerman's success in drafting has been greatly exaggerated. to stanley's point, its still a little early for most of the picks. otoh, you could see seider/raymond as hits right away. edvinsson took a year. kasper has had 1/2 a good season and a flop. danielson flopped this year. asp was shown to be quite flawed. while every prospect develops in their own way, if they were going to be stars you would likely know it already. and the success of finnie and kasper on the top line next to raymond/larkin tells me more about larkin than it does about yzerman's drafting.

if tkachuk comes out and says "i will not sign an extension and will only sogn an extension with the detroit red wings" then we can probably trade for him. the red wings have a better chance of making the playoffs this season than that happening.

i think its too late to trade larkin.

come on, jason. 7th round pick hits are pure luck. getting a plugger like finnie is nice, but it doesnt show any particular acumen. gibson for a second was a decent trade. debrincat told ottawa he would not sign an extension and would only sign an extension in detroit. that's not yzerman finding a good deal, its having a deal thrown into his lap. i dont give him much credit for that. every prospect who we are expecting to be good will not pan out. we expected kasper to be good, buium, wallinder, tuomisto...where are they? he's reponsible for the final product and the final product hasnt been good enough. in fact, its failed in spectacular ways in multiple seasons now. none of us can say with any certainty that "firing yzerman wont help." how do you know that? the criticism about yzerman's plan when he started this was his signing middling talent to long term deals, thus raising the floor temporarily but in a way that prevents them from bottoming out long enough. the second criticism was in his drafting "try hard" players who dont have elite skills like danielson and kasper. well, how are they doing? third, the "plan" to get cap space and sign free agents failed because he refused to sign any top free agents while we had space and now EVERYONE has space and there is no one to sign. no kyle connor. no mitch marner. no gavrikov. no guentzle. and stop dreaming about trading for austin matthews because 1) they traded their asset for justin faulk; and 2) the bidding would start with mo seider. we need to stop blaming kenny for taking zadina over hughes and realize yzerman's failure to draft quality depth players and inability to sign quality players has resulted in this season's collapse.

the flyers trade a second, fourth, and ryan poheling for trevor zegras. zegras has 66 points this year. would that have been a decent trade for us to make? the flyers beat winnipeg 7-1 yesterday while the wings folded. the flyers are rebuilding and were supposed to be terrible! and who do they play in the playoffs? the penguins. kyle dubas makes a bunch of moves that work for them, what great moves has yzerman made lately? "drafting mo seider" only gets you so much cachet anymore. raymond is a nice, small scoring wing who has failed down the stretch in two straight seasons. edvinsson is coming along nicely. anything else?

its been seven years, this is no longer kenny's problem. this year's collapse was on yzerman. in seven years you cant get a decent second pair that doesnt get caved in regularly? in seven years you cant get a scoring wing to go along with larkin/raymond? i love stevie and i acknowledge that he was put into a tremendous hole by kenny and bad lottery luck but come on. kenny didnt make him miss on 5 of his six second round picks in his first two years. kenny didnt make him sign compher to a ridiculously long deal or rasmussen for any amount of time. he's spent his years in detroit not "overpaying" for impact players (in his words) but then overpays for marginal talent like copp, compher, and chairot. regardless, its been seven years and the team has failed time and again. its HIS team now. this is his failure.

how do they get rid of ras and compher? youre going to cut and stretch both of them? they attached a second round pick to get rid of jake walman, who was actually GOOD! What asset would you have to attach to get rid of those two?

Another late season fade by cossa. by all means bring him up, he'll fit right in.

For once, MCS's ridiculously over the top hyperbole overreaction is justified.

this thread should be closed on march 1st of every year. just to save us all some time.

dude. no.