Tank Nation UNITE!!!

[GhostofPotvin29]

It's funny, but at the time of that trade I think the general feeling was, that Raycraft looked like a pretty talented goalie, and Rask looked alright, but was getting beat out for game minutes by our other goalie . Goes to show how much you can really tell about goalies at the early stages of their careers.

Rask was traded a year after he was drafted before he even came over to NA and he still played another year in Finland before coming over to Boston's organization.

After having an outstanding World Junior Championship.  I felt he was by far the goalie of the tournament and outclassed Pogge.  Raycroft wasn't even the backup goalie for the bruins at the time of the trade and general consensus was the he was a one hit wonder.  I don't mind that they tried something but trading the wrong prospect in my mind really upset me at the time.  They chose Pogge over Rask.  That was the mistake and its even easier to say it in hindsight.

I could be wrong, but I think at the time Rask was considered the best goalie outside of the NHL.

 

[TML fan]

Oh, hello 2007.

 

[TDotMassive]

It's funny, but at the time of that trade I think the general feeling was, that Raycraft looked like a pretty talented goalie, and Rask looked alright, but was getting beat out for game minutes by our other goalie . Goes to show how much you can really tell about goalies at the early stages of their careers.

Rask had just come off the WJC and was being hailed as one of the two best goaltending prospects in the world at the time, along with Justin Pogge.  I almost cried the day that trade went down... I knew what JFJ had done to our future.  Any fool at the time knew Rask was going to be a star...

 

[TDotMassive]

It's funny, but at the time of that trade I think the general feeling was, that Raycraft looked like a pretty talented goalie, and Rask looked alright, but was getting beat out for game minutes by our other goalie . Goes to show how much you can really tell about goalies at the early stages of their careers.

Rask was traded a year after he was drafted before he even came over to NA and he still played another year in Finland before coming over to Boston's organization.

After having an outstanding World Junior Championship.  I felt he was by far the goalie of the tournament and outclassed Pogge.  Raycroft wasn't even the backup goalie for the bruins at the time of the trade and general consensus was the he was a one hit wonder.  I don't mind that they tried something but trading the wrong prospect in my mind really upset me at the time.  They chose Pogge over Rask.  That was the mistake and its even easier to say it in hindsight.

Yup.  I swear I almost cried when that trade went down... I was in shock, how foolish.  JFJ was trying to jump the queue and get the Leafs back to the playoffs, rather than just realizing we had the #1 and #2 goaltending prospects in the world, and to just let that play itself out.

 

[Kin]

Not that it matters a ton but Tuukka Rask being the #1 goaltending prospect in the world at the time of the trade was by no means a settled matter and Pogge being the #2 is an outright fiction. Price, Bernier, Montoya....and so on and so forth.

 

[Redleaf]

My memory isn't what it used to be, but I recall a lot of media personalities agreeing that Pogge was the one to keep of the two. As mentioned already, he had come off the world junior championships and was on his way to stardom. Huge mistake in hindsight, but at the time I would say the majority of media and fans thought Pogge would be the bigger star.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

My memory isn't what it used to be, but I recall a lot of media personalities agreeing that Pogge was the one to keep of the two. As mentioned already, he had come off the world junior championships and was on his way to stardom. Huge mistake in hindsight, but at the time I would say the majority of media and fans thought Pogge would be the bigger star.

I'd say that's a fair statement, but that was mostly just because Pogge was Canadian and Rask was Finnish. People were bombarded with positive talk about Pogge because of his junior accomplishments but really it didn't take a hockey genius to know that a big part of Pogge's success were because he played on an absurdly good defensive team in the WHL and an even better Canadian team at the World Juniors. Rask was always the more talented goalie, people like the media just couldn't see it because they weren't watching games in Finland.

 

[Highlander]

Man I stired up a hornest nest in this one, more water under the bridge or a little into my Scotch.
I think we should go after O'Conner for a hometown goalie at 6'5". Why not?

 

[lamajama]

Carolina wins in OT. Gives us back one of those 2 wins.

Carolina 5 points up with 4 games left each. Can we hang on?

 

[Bullfrog]

Forget Carolina, what about Edmonton?

Edmonton goes 4-0 and the Leafs go 1-3 (or 3-1 and 0-4) and the Leafs get 3rd!

Edmonton would have 67 points at the Leafs 66.

Completely unlikely, but, go Oilers go?

 

[lamajama]

Forget Carolina, what about Edmonton?

Edmonton goes 4-0 and the Leafs go 1-3 (or 3-1 and 0-4) and the Leafs get 3rd!

Edmonton would have 67 points at the Leafs 66.

Completely unlikely, but, go Oilers go?

Ok you lost me completely when you said the Oilers go 4-0

 

[Bullfrog]

I'll be honest, I called myself a silly, silly man while typing that.  8)

 

[Kin]

You know, for all the talk about how terrible it would be if LA just misses the playoffs and gets McDavid am I the only one who thinks it would be downright hilarious if that happened to Pittsburgh?

 

[Al14]

You know, for all the talk about how terrible it would be if LA just misses the playoffs and gets McDavid am I the only one who thinks it would be downright hilarious if that happened to Pittsburgh?

It would give Pittsburgh a reason to trade Crosby, or Malkin! 

 

[CarltonTheBear]

You know, for all the talk about how terrible it would be if LA just misses the playoffs and gets McDavid am I the only one who thinks it would be downright hilarious if that happened to Pittsburgh?

Or even Detroit really. Right as the Yzerman/Shanahan era ends, they luck out by finding diamonds in the rough in Datsyuk/Zetterberg to take over. As that era ends they luck out with the lottery. I didn't realize how much both of those teams have dropped lately. They'll both probably still make it, but it'll be close.

I do kind of wish that there was still something that said a team could only move up a certain amount of spots by winning the lottery. Even if you increased it from what it previously was.

 

[Al14]

You know, for all the talk about how terrible it would be if LA just misses the playoffs and gets McDavid am I the only one who thinks it would be downright hilarious if that happened to Pittsburgh?

Or even Detroit really. Right as the Yzerman/Shanahan era ends, they luck out by finding diamonds in the rough in Datsyuk/Zetterberg to take over. As that era ends they luck out with the lottery. I didn't realize how much both of those teams have dropped lately. They'll both probably still make it, but it'll be close.

I do kind of wish that there was still something that said a team could only move up a certain amount of spots by winning the lottery. Even if you increased it from what it previously was.

Detroit has had a nice run of luck.  Time has come for a fall!

 

[princedpw]

There has been a lot of talk recently about how terrible it is to tank and what a problem it is.  In my opinion, a much much bigger problem is bad teams having no way to get better in a relatively short period of time.  You really don't want a team to be stuck out of the playoffs for a decade.  Most fanbases would just disappear.  So there have to be mechanisms to improve a team.

In the NHL, few really good players are coming on to UFA market, and when the few "above average"  players come on to the market, they get massively overpaid. 

In addition, the hard cap has really reduced the number of trades so trading your way to improvement is exceptionally hard to do.

If they flatten out the lottery, giving all non-playoff teams similar odds at getting the top draft picks, you are guaranteed to see more teams languishing at the bottom longer, due simply to the luck of the draw.

It doesn't really matter how they got to the bottom, the teams at the bottom are really bad.  They need to get the best players so they can bounce back up.  The prospect of getting these good players also gives the fanbase some hope. 

Basically, if every non-playoff team had the same odds of drafting 1-14, I just don't see how the Leafs would ever be able to get better.  It's not like they have better management than the other teams ... They need some kind of edge for being bad.

 

[Kin]

It doesn't really matter how they got to the bottom, the teams at the bottom are really bad.

The problem I think you're making is confusing teams that are bad by design and teams that are just bad. Teams like the Sabres are largely bad by choice. If they had incentive to be as good as possible every year then, odds were, you wouldn't often see teams that were in a significantly worse position than, say, a team like New Jersey or Colorado where they were 5 or 6 games out of Playoff contention, there's just too much salary parity for that.

So it does matter how they get there. The incentives the league provides for failure almost certainly played a role in the personnel decisions Buffalo made in the off-season. Connor McDavid was a prize everyone saw and they built their team accordingly. Even the Leafs were bad but not embarrassingly so until they started stripping their team for parts.

As the back-diving contracts of old become less and less of an issue around the league and we see less drastic cap growth you're going to see more and more teams in a position like Chicago is this year where they're almost certainly going to have to jettison some legitimate talent in the off-season. That would be the mechanism bad teams have, along with smart management, to improve. The truth is that right now we don't know how effective smart management can be in terms of building a winner because a smart person coming into the league to run a club will immediately see that the league rewards failure to such an extent that they will probably recommend tanking.

 

[lamajama]

I'd like to see the bottom, say 5, all slotted according to lottery. Have the odds relatively close - within a few percentage points or a max of say 5% difference
from 30 to 26. That would create some excitement for sure if those slots were all up in the air.

 

[Al14]

I'd like to see the bottom, say 5, all slotted according to lottery. Have the odds relatively close - within a few percentage points or a max of say 5% difference
from 30 to 26. That would create some excitement for sure if those slots were all up in the air.

Just go free market, illuminate the draft!