Oops. I forgot about this thread. Anyways, Flyers fans, I feel really bad for you with the way the series has gone. That said, as gecks said earlier, your future looks scary good, and your prospects look scary good.
A good chunk of your young core is locked up long term in Giroux, Voracek, Simmonds and Couturier, who are 28, 26, 27 and 23 respectively. Your star dman is 22, and you have a ton of young players scratching the surface of the NHL, such as forwards in Scott Laughton playing 70 games, Konecny tearing up the OHL (Although I'd like to see him get an AHL season), and Leier who had a good AHL season too. Even AUbe-Kubel looks intriguing. Not to mention you have dmen like Provarov, Hagg, and Sanheim(who from first hand viewing in the WHL is sick, he also a good AHL debut too), and in net Stolarz looking like a good pick. Not that Hextall will pull the trigger, but since you still have all your picks as well as Chicago's 2nd and LAs 3rd and 6th you could potentially swing a trade to move up higher in the draft, or just rake in prospects. As a Canucks fan, I am very jealous of your position.
erkstonTOM SESTITO
Holy shit, Sestito is actually still in the NHL after he got cut from the Canucks? Damn.
gecksFirst off, the Flyers have Hextall as GM, who has done incredible things for the organization, and I suspect he'll continue to do so.
The dude is a wizard, I still remember that twitter exchange I had after the Lecavalier trade. Even though Vinny has been good for LA, the fact he got rid of the amount of dead weight he did still baffles me. Big fan of the work he's started to do and I'm super jealous because of it.
Wish I could say those things about Benning though. While I like his drafting, his signing of Stecher, and the trade to get Baertschi, I hate most of his other trades and his signings. The Bonino trade was terrible as he heavily overpaid, trading a 3rd for Dorsett unnecessary, he proclaims that we're getting younger and then trades Kassian for someone 5 years older than him in Prust (really, you couldnt at least get someone useful?), Lack for below market value (although that's somewhat working out), and the big one, trading Shinkaruk for Markus Granlund, a freaking awful trade. He pisses away assets like losing Corrado on waivers, and unnecessarily adding draft picks (a 5th in the Kassian trade, a 7th in the Etem trade, a 3rd in the Kesler trade). I dont hate his UFA moves as much as other Canucks fans, I'm still not thrilled that Miller was for 3 years, 2 would have been great. All I hope is that with a few prospects in college starting to look really really good (Demko, Boeser, Gaudette) he doesn't let them walk ala Justin Schultz. Sorry for ranting, a lot of Benning moves make me sad :(
AbrissIf Edmonton wins the draft lottery again they seriously need to consider adding a rule surrounding multiple first draft picks in a certain time span
I think I would want to die. Ideally, as a Canucks fan, we end up 1 or 2, but part of me would also like to see the Blue Jackets break the top 3 pushing the Oilers to either 4th or 5th, making up for the Yakupov draft lottery. It would also be funny to see the Blue Jackets trade Johansen, and then immediately draft another franchise center in Matthews. As a Canucks fan though, I want Patrik Laine.
On a non NHL note, anyone here follow the WHL?