Everything Else

Oilers Spotlight: Cam And Magic Talbot

By 1016

You could draw a lot of similarities between the search for a goalie and the search for a quarterback. One aspect that looks an awful lot alike is when a team splurges on what had been a backup to be their starter. You might see it here in town with the Lakeshore 11 and giving up the goods for Jimmy Garoppolo (god help us). In hockey, last year we saw Martin Jones, Cam Talbot, Thomas Greiss, Robin Lehner, and one or two others move from backup roles to starter roles, with varying success. This season Chad Johnson, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and one or two others have seized jobs. Heading into this offseason, Scott Darling could be given starter’s money and responsibilities, and one wonders if someone might not be coaxed to try with Antti Raanta after he walked the same gilded platform that Talbot did, following Henrik Lundqvist.

While Jones did get his team to a Final last year, there’s a serious argument that Talbot has been the biggest success of all of these.

Everything Else

Devils Spotlight: The Fantasies of Sinful Screens Of Taylor Hall

By 918

God these are getting way dated, aren’t they. Fuck I’m old. Anyway…

Let’s not bury the lede here. The Oilers are absolute fucking morons for trading Taylor Hall. Since he came into the league in 2010, here are the left wings that have outscored him: Sedin, Ovechkin (who has played right wing a lot of that time), Zetterberg (who played center for a lot of that time), Benn, Marleau, Vanek, and Sharp (who also played center for part of that period. So that’s four surefire Hall of Famers, Benn who might have a case when all is said and done, the Hall of Very Good for Sharp, and somehow Vanek got in here. These players just don’t grow on fucking trees.

In terms of analytic numbers, Hall has been far above his teammates for the last five seasons, save one. In the lockout shortened year he carried the water over 8% higher than his teammates. He’s been over 3% better than his teammates twice, and was +0.86% last year as the Oilers began to maybe sort of figure things out.

Everything Else

Sabres Spotlight: Ryan O’Reilly

By 981

Let’s say you had a 24-year old center. And let’s say that center had put up three 55+ point seasons in the past four, and in the fourth season he didn’t get to play half of it because you wouldn’t pay him. And let’s say other than that one season, this center missed only 12 games in five seasons. Would you first shift that center to wing? Would you do everything you could to not pay him? And then would you trade him for a collection of hopefuls and spare parts? If you answered yes to all of this, you’re ready to run the Colorado Avalanche.

While the Avs will claim that ROR was never going to be anything more than a third center for them, who willingly gives up on center-depth like this? You’d have to be insane. And luckily for the Sabres, the Avs are completely fucking nuts.