Tavares and Matthews have been red hot to start the year! I'm not a leafs fan, but I have a few of them in my fantasy hockey pools, so they are exciting to follow.
I feel Morgan Rielly is being a bit overlooked though, as he's never usually mentioned along with Tavares and Mathews. Rielly has 10 points in 4 games, with quite a few being power play points. I feel like he's set for a monster year too.

Lol yeah his hold out was a gamble, and it’s not paying off. He has zero negotiation rights this year, and Shanahan knows it. Nylander can either sign a bridge deal (which apparently both the team and him don’t want) or a long term one. But either way, he’s not getting the $$$$ he’s currently demanding.
I honestly hope they trade him for a solid, young defenceman on a team friendly contract. They need help on the back end most, and a cheap contract would help them prepare for next summer when they have to extend Matthews and Marner. Who are way more valuable than Nylander.

Carey Price is skipping too, but it seems to be the team that decided on it, to give him some rest as he's dealing with a minor nagging injury.
Its interesting, because if Weber isn't voted in, then the Canadiens won't have a representative at the All Star game.

Better bring back John Scott.

Duchene has been officially traded to Columbus for davidsson, abramov and a conditional 1st.

Hopefully now that teams are done waiting on seeing where Duchene goes, we start to see some more trades happen. Stone is another big name that will likely be traded as well.

That was some terrible luck. Zuccarello looked good too, as he had both a goal and an assist before breaking his arm. With Benn getting injured (albeit not as seriously) they went from pretty strong on the left side to pretty depleted.

So far today we've seen:
- Nyquist to San Jose for a 2nd and a 3rd (I like this deal for San Jose a lot)
- Kinkaid to Columbus for a 5th in 2022 (pretty much free goalie insurance for Columbus at that price)
- Hayes to Winnipeg for Lemieux and a 1st (I don't like this deal much for Winnipeg. Hayes is a solid player, but they gave up too much)
- one or two other small moves

I heard that vegas is the frontrunner for Stone now. Nashville and Calgary still circling, but apparently the asking price is currently too high. I wouldn't be surprised to see Ottawa mess it up and not get him traded, and then have him walk in the summer for nothing.

Minnesota traded Granlund to Nashville for Fiala. That's a decent trade

For Hartman and a pick. Not sure yet what round the pick is though.
Between Simmonds and Boyle, Nashvilles trying to get tougher for the playoffs

I think you meant Marcus Johansson from New Jersey to Boston for a 2nd and 4th. Johanssen would’ve been rad but no way Nashville parts with him. Johansson should provide nice wing depth for Boston at a reasonable price.

I think both Columbus and Nashville won, but in completely different ways.
Nashville made the shrewdest moves. They got Boyle and Simmonds to add grit for the playoffs. And they added Granlund and Simmonds to give them a great top two lines. Missing both of these things has held them back in previous playoffs. Combine these new strengths with their amazing defence and solid goaltending, and They are going to be very hard to beat in the playoffs. They also didn’t lose any top draft picks or irreplaceable players to do it too. Poile is a hell of a gm. I really dislike the preds but even I see how much better they are now.
Columbus also won big time, but in a different way. Their gm has balls of steel. Faced with the idea that bobrovsky and panarin will walk this summer, most people assumed they’d play it safe and trade them for assets, and try again next year. Nope. They basically said eff that, let’s go for it now. Let’s give panarin and bob a reason to stay (more so panarin thsn bob but that’s not the point). They went out and got a ton of new talent. The team is reinvigorated, and the fans should be too. It’s an exciting time to be a Columbus fan, when most people assumed the deadline wouldn’t be for them. Columbus took a huge risk bringing a bunch more ufa on board, and giving up good assets to get them too. But it’s damn exciting to watch. Good for them for being ballsy and not just playing it safe/boring.

Andersen has pretty much single handedly killed my fantasy playoffs. Pulled in two games in a row now. Doesn’t help that I also lost letang, Pasternak and tarasenko to injuries as well.

I had byfuglien too but dropped him last week. My team was first the whole season until playoffs hit, and then all this happened. I can’t even be that mad, it’s just incredibly bad luck.

Yes Letangs a poor defenceman, but he’s great for fantasy hockey, as it’s basically being able to slot in an extra forward into a dman slot. He’s pretty good for producing points, shots on goal and blocks. He’s definitely more valuable to a fantasy team than to his actual nhl team as a defenceman though.

Kuch with a 4 point night. He’s been such a beast all year, it’s insane.

And he was upset that the Hurricanes weren't treating hockey seriously lol

Did you guys hear about the press conference oilers ceo bob Nicholson had? He basically said that the reason they missed the playoffs was Toby reider. He actually said that if reider has scored 10-12 goals, they’d have made the playoffs.
So not only did they throw a third liner under the bus for the whole season, they basically said they’re not worried about changing anything for next year. Minus reider of course

Melnyk just did a radio interview, and spent time bashing the maple leafs rebuild. His best line was “somebody forgot about defense”.
How the hell does he feel he’s qualified to judge any other nhl team? This isn’t a pro-leafs response, more of a wtf-melnyk response lol

I hope your team can finish strong for you! The hockey pool I'm in wrapped up our playoffs a week or two ago. I finished the season first overall, but injuries hit me hard to and I limped my way to a second place playoff finish. I barely won the semifinals, so I was ok with finishing second all things considered.

whoops, double post

First round predictions:
- Calgary beats Colorado in 7
- San Jose beats Vegas in 6
- Nashville beats Dallas in 6
- st.louis beats Winnipeg in 6
- Tampa beats Columbus in 5
- Boston beats Toronto in 7
- Washington beats Carolina in 5
- Pittsburgh beats islanders in 6

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It really was. It truly goes to show that anything can happen in the playoffs. While I still believe Tampa Bay takes the series, hopefully this serves as a wake-up call to their guys to not take Columbus lightly. Tampa's 3rd and 4th lines were doing all the work, hopefully they can get some production out of their top guys.

So.... that Tampa team.... not exactly the start most of us predicted for them....

This Vegas / San Jose third period is unreal

Yeah the call was the right one. It also fired Thornton up, who then fired up the rest of the Sharks. Such a crazy third period and overtime to watch. A way better game 7 than the Leafs/Bruins

Anyone want to take bets on where the leafs go from here now? I think its safe to say that Kadri and Gardiner are gone, and probably one or two other guys due to the pending cap crunch. I think Babcock is still safe (for now), but only due to his overall career accomplishments. He really seemed to have trouble making proper matchups to the bruins lines.

The jerks are heading to the next round!
These playoffs have been crazy.

Mine are quite similar:
Boston Bruins in 5
San Jose Sharks in 6
St.Louis Blues in 6
Carolina "Bunch of Jerks" in 6 (this one is more a hope, as I really don't care for the Islanders, even though I feel they are the stronger of the two teams)

I'm not a big fan of either team, so hopefully I'm looking at this somewhat impartially, but here's how I currently see it:
Pavelski is cross checked by Eakins. While he is falling, Stastny pushes him down / out of the way. It looks like the push from Stastny is what makes him turn at a funny angle and land on his head. But it really does look like he was off balance and falling from the Eakins cross check. Would he have landed on his head without the Stastny shove? Maybe not. But he was falling already either way. It was from the cross check and following shove that caused him to fall at a bad angle and bleed from the head. By the rulebook, a crosscheck that results in an injury is a 5 minute major. This one is just murky as the stastny shove complicates things.
The call still has people divided, and this is after a couple days and countless reviews from a bunch of angles. Imagine trying to be a ref who has to make the call that moment. I don't envy them in that situation.

I agree in that he likely wouldn't have fallen on his head from the cross check itself. It's from the Stastny shove that his body changes direction and he lands on his head. So it murky's the call. Should Stastny have been in the box instead of Eakins? I don't think that would've been right either. I think Stastny's actions changed the end result stemming from Eakin's cross check. But because the cross check was the reason Pavelski began to fall to begin with, they felt they had to charge that as the action that led to the end result.
I will agree that the call completely changed the game. If it wasn't a major, San Jose wouldn't have made the comeback. So I can see why Vegas fans are upset. I still can't believe that San Jose managed 4 goals in 5 minutes. Unreal.

Yeah he was leaking onto the ice pretty decently. I think you have to take the injury into account, as it was the reason the call turned out as it did. Without the injury (and in this case, the visible blood that everyone could see), at most it would've been a 2 minute minor. But the rules state that if an injury occurs, it becomes a 5 minute major. I think their hands were tied that they couldn't do a 2 minute minor, as they couldn't say it was crosschecking without acknowledging the injury that theoretically came as a result from it. So it was a 5 minute major or nothing at all, and with Pav's bleeding, they felt they had to call it.
I feel that it all begins after the refs see Pavelski lying on the ice, motionless and bleeding. So they scramble to understand what happened. From either one of the refs or the video review, they take away that the cross check led to him on the ice bleeding. No way is it that straight forward / simple, but in the end the cross check was the start and the bleeding on the ice was the end.
It just sucks that it happened in a playoff series game 7. It was a great game to watch, but it absolutely taints the win. Not because I think it was the wrong call (I feel the refs made the best call they could based on what they knew and what the rulebook held them to), but because the one call directly changed the outcome of the game. Though I still feel Gallant should've used a time out to settle his team back down after the first two goals of the power play, as letting in 4 goals is on them as well.

I also completely agree that there was no intent to injure by Eakins or Stastny, even though it was a result of the events.

Whoops, double post.

Well I didn't get the # of games quite right, but I was able to pick the 4 that moved on.
This round I'll go with:
San Jose Sharks in 7
Carolina "Bunch of Jerks" Hurricanes in 6

Toronto absolutely robbed Colorado on that whole deal. I'm not a big Leafs fan, but I tip my hat to Dubas on that one.