NHL 2015-16 Season Thread

Braen_sl said:

And he has another point tonight already

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I'm sure scoring will come down as the season goes on, but when I checked earlier there was 6 or 7 guys that had played about 10 games already that would be on pace to top 100 points this year.

Nice to see the Orpik/Carlson pairing being terrible against the Rags. Pretty nice play by Ovechkin and Schmidt to keep it close at least I guess. If we don't tighten up defensively we're going to get run out of the building tonight.

Hope Holtby and Carlson/Orpik forget all about this game. I guess Holtby ended up with 16 saves, but when Rags went up 5-2 he had allowed 5 on 17 shots. Woof.

Yeah, I checked it early in the 2nd and it was 4-1. I'm like, whelp, guess the Rags have our number again this season...

Elurin_sl said:

Yeah, I checked it early in the 2nd and it was 4-1. I'm like, whelp, guess the Rags have our number again this season...

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Well, when you go into the 2nd period down 2-1, out shoot them 14-2 in the 2nd period, and enter the 3rd down 4-2...some dumb shit went on.

Awesome, looks like McDavid has blown a shoulder. That would make three of the four first overalls to have a shoulder issue. The hockey gods hate us.

Eomer_sl said:

Awesome, looks like McDavid has blown a shoulder. That would make three of the four first overalls to have a shoulder issue. The hockey gods hate us.

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One thing Ovechkin has always defied everyone's predictions on is his durability. Everyone was convinced with his physical style of play that he'd miss a ton of time in his career. He's never missed more than 4 games in a season save for '09-'10 where he missed 10 (although 4 were due to suspension).

Eomer_sl said:

They experimented with different kinds of bigger nets, but no, they never brought any in. I'm pretty firmly opposed to that, as would most hockey fans.

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I'm not as firmly opposed to it as I once was.

Merrith_sl said:

One thing Ovechkin has always defied everyone's predictions on is his durability. Everyone was convinced with his physical style of play that he'd miss a ton of time in his career. He's never missed more than 4 games in a season save for '09-'10 where he missed 10 (although 4 were due to suspension).

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More jealous of this from him than his goal scoring. Sid has missed like 150+ games and not been 100% for a huge chunk more. He shouldeasilyhave another 200+ points in his career if he was more durable. Or lucky. Or just got his head targeted by shitbag players less. Either way it's a shame he'll never have the career he could have. He needs more Russian in him, Ovie/Jagr style Russian.

Eomer_sl said:

Awesome, looks like McDavid has blown a shoulder. That would make three of the four first overalls to have a shoulder issue. The hockey gods hate us.

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Broken collar bone, sorry that's a kick in the teeth.

It'll be interesting to see how the team does without him. Eberle is coming back any day now, and it's possible Draisatl will move from the wing to #2C. Or maybe they keep Drai on the wing and move Lander up to #2C to give him a boost. In any case, it's the shits for McDavid as this will probably preclude him from having a shot at the Calder. Thankfully it's a broken collar bone, which should heal and not be a long term problem requiring extensive surgery and recovery like Hall and Nugent-Hopkins.

Biggest concern for me, really, is seeing what Chiarelli can do about our D. Last night the Oilers had close to 7m in the pressbox (Ference/Fayne) and 4.25m in the AHL (Nikitin). Meanwhile on the ice, 4 of the D playing are rookies: Reinhart (13 games), Nurse (6), Davidson (18) and Klefbom (90). Not a recipe for success in the NHL. Just goes to show you how fucking awful MacT was as GM. At least Nikitin's contract expires this year, and Ference expires the year after. We're stuck with Fayne until the end of the 2017-18 season. He's probably an excellent third pairing or average second pairing guy, but at 3.625 million a year, he's got to be more than that.

edit: whoops, forgot about Scrivens also making 2.3m to play in the AHL. And he's apparently been awful in his two starts. So that's approximately 13.4m tied in up 4 contracts that are either healthy scratches or playing in the AHL. Well done MacT, well done. Bold moves indeed.

Damn thats a real shame about McDavid. He is fun to watch.

Merrith_sl said:

Well, when you go into the 2nd period down 2-1, out shoot them 14-2 in the 2nd period, and enter the 3rd down 4-2...some dumb shit went on.

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Yeah rough game for Holtby. I feel like even though caps had the puck pretty much all of the second period (two goal scoring turnovers aside) Rangers played pretty smart defensively and kept the high quality chances to a minimum. Can't imagine this game is at all indicitive of how the next few will go at all but heres hoping.

StoiCynic_sl said:

Damn thats a real shame about McDavid. He is fun to watch.



Yeah rough game for Holtby. I feel like even though caps had the puck pretty much all of the second period (two goal scoring turnovers aside) Rangers played pretty smart defensively and kept the high quality chances to a minimum. Can't imagine this game is at all indicitive of how the next few will go at all but heres hoping.

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I feel like I can't even blame Holtby, Carlson/Orpik pairing was a dumpster fire all over the ice...and it wasn't even mainly Orpik. Odd man rushes left and right. Still, you'd want Holtby to have another of those shots or two.

Time for the Oilers to tank the season and end up with yet another 1st overall pick!

Pizoi_sl said:

Time for the Oilers to tank the season and end up with yet another 1st overall pick!

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Which will then be lost in mediocrity and never fully actualize. There needs to be a limit on how many 1st overalls you can win in succession, assuming there isn't one already.

Hey, we've come by it honestly through complete organizational ineptitude. See my post above about the close to 14m in contracts tied up with guys either sitting as healthy scratches cause they're shittier than 20 year olds with no NHL experience or who are even worse than that and are down in the AHL.

Thankfully at least they cleaned out some of the riff raff over the summer, or at least moved them to positions where they should't be able to do much damage. Although given the awful contracts that they handed out like candy, I still don't get why MacT and Howson are employed in the organization. In any case, hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel when this season is wrapped up.

Ovechkin never shies away from the Chara match up. Can't believe we actually scored on a 5 on 3 too, love it when Marchand finally gets shit on for his constant douchebaggery.

Merrith_sl said:

Ovechkin never shies away from the Chara match up.

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He really doesn't,but maybe he should. Even when he has him lined up it's a tall task.



Heh, tall task.



Anyways, I could swear there was a play where Ovie full on canon-balled in to him right behind the net once. Airborne and all, it was awesome. I've tried to find it a few times(including just now) and the only conclusion I can draw is that I was drinking at the time and thought the clip I linked above was very different than what actually happened. I mean I can't even find a clip of anyone hitting him like that really=P The Clutterbuck one doesn't come close.

Chara is just a tower of power. I know Ovechkin has knocked him off the puck a few times, and managed to out muscle him in front of the net for his goal tonight, but you're just not going to out and out win the physical battle with Chara. You can however, get in his head a little bit by engaging him and coming close to 50/50.

Ovechkin has put up pretty good numbers against the B's in his career. I do remember a quote from Trotz telling Ovechkin he might be able to get him a better match up on the ice and Ovechkin basically responded with "why? go power vs. power"

Fuck the Bruins. Solid win.

Metro already taking the shape a lot of us predicted. Caps/Rags/Isles/Pens on top. Philly after a hopeful start has returned to levels of sucking that we knew them and Carolina would share this year. Jersey is doing a little better than expected after a slow start. The one team we thought might crash the party (or just have both wildcards be in the Metro) was Columbus, but we all know how their start went. They're 4-3 under Torts though, but it's a deep ass hole they dug themselves in regards to trying to somehow get back into contention.

Atlantic shaping up like last year already as well except for Ottawa and Boston both doing slightly better. Poor Babcock... the Leafs are so bad. Six points in twelve games.