2024-25 OOTS: Playoff Edition

[JelloPuddingPop]

That Nurse contract, though....

Buyout coming.

[BCExpat]

I may have to buy a Panther's jersey. Everyone in my neighborhood is an Oiler fan. Needless to say, the streets were extremely quite tonight - all except for me hooting and hollering -

Can't wait for Mcloser to announce that he is going to try free agency at the end of next season. The Oilers will have to decide if they want to take a chance and go for it with McD next season (and lose him with no compensation at the end of the season) or trade him before the trade deadline. Also, if he does decide to remain with the Oilers, they will have the same problem as they have now - having enough cap space to surround him with some decent players (not just at the forward positions). They have never been a good defensive team, ever since they entered the NHL. Always relying on offence to get them by. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

[Meds]

That Nurse contract, though....

Hehheeh

[Hockey Widow]

McJesus:

We just kept doing the same fucking things and banging our heads against a wall……


Sounds like he is selling out the coaching staff.

[UWSaint]

Florida is very very good.

[Lancer]

Florida is very very good.

Even Edmonton media were bemoaning the fact that as good as Edmonton was - and they had the audacity to say that the team would have been a Stanley Cup champion in many other times - that Florida was that much better. The tragedy being that the Oilers were cursed to peak while Florida was peaking even higher.

Moreso than Vegas, Florida has the ability to be that solid, contending team for a while. They're just that solid, top to bottom.

[Hockey Widow]

Like all dynasties, Florida has learned how to win. Three years in the SCF, 2 victorious. This ability to know how to win is critical to team's success. Edmonton has yet to learn how to win. No doubt a key injury or 2, average, at best, goaltending, play a part. But the ability to bear down and gut out wins, doing the hard things, shift after shift is critical. Florida got rattled last year then went on to lose 3 and let the Oilers back into the series. This year they did not get rattled. Edmonton had no real answer and got rattled falling behind every 1st period.

Florida is a great team. Can they keep the core together? We will see. I think it will be a hard team to walk away from.

[Chef Boi RD]

In the time since Buffalo traded Reinhart and Eichel, Reinhart has won two Stanley cups and Eichel has won one. In that time Buffalo has remained a lottery team drafting 9th, 13th and 14th overall since trading those two and are about to draft 9th overall in the 2025 draft. 4 consecutive non playoff starts since trading the two while in 3 of those 4 playoffs, Reinhart has won two Stanley cups, and Eichel one. You think we got it bad?

[Meds]

Like all dynasties, Florida has learned how to win. Three years in the SCF, 2 victorious. This ability to know how to win is critical to team's success. Edmonton has yet to learn how to win. No doubt a key injury or 2, average, at best, goaltending, play a part. But the ability to bear down and gut out wins, doing the hard things, shift after shift is critical. Florida got rattled last year then went on to lose 3 and let the Oilers back into the series. This year they did not get rattled. Edmonton had no real answer and got rattled falling behind every 1st period.

Florida is a great team. Can they keep the core together? We will see. I think it will be a hard team to walk away from.

The crazy thing is, they have $19M in cap space right now, and their only big tickets needing extensions are Bennett and Ekblad (looking at Marchand as a pure rental). Bobrovsky's $10M also comes off of the cap next season which, coupled with another cap increase, will give them $20+M more to play with.....and Bobrovsky will be 37 when that contract is done. I can't see him getting more than $7M on a one or two year extension at that point.

Florida is looking very very good for years to come.

[dangler]

Alot of credit has to go to Zito for the way he built the team. To amass that much talent and size in a salary cap league is really something special.

[UWSaint]

Like all dynasties, Florida has learned how to win. Three years in the SCF, 2 victorious. This ability to know how to win is critical to team's success. Edmonton has yet to learn how to win. No doubt a key injury or 2, average, at best, goaltending, play a part. But the ability to bear down and gut out wins, doing the hard things, shift after shift is critical. Florida got rattled last year then went on to lose 3 and let the Oilers back into the series. This year they did not get rattled. Edmonton had no real answer and got rattled falling behind every 1st period.

Florida is a great team. Can they keep the core together? We will see. I think it will be a hard team to walk away from.

The crazy thing is, they have $19M in cap space right now, and their only big tickets needing extensions are Bennett and Ekblad (looking at Marchand as a pure rental). Bobrovsky's $10M also comes off of the cap next season which, coupled with another cap increase, will give them $20+M more to play with.....and Bobrovsky will be 37 when that contract is done. I can't see him getting more than $7M on a one or two year extension at that point.

Florida is looking very very good for years to come.

They've done a great job building the team, for sure. The number of bad contracts is zero -- well, maybe you should never pay a goalie like they do, but its all worth it for two cups (in which he played well). The core guys all should have a few more seasons in the tank. They don't have overperforming ELC's, but they've done a great job squeezing higher quality play from guys that looked like they didn't have more. Another level for Rinehardt. Two more levels out of Bennet. OEL bounced back last year; Schmidt looked decent this run. And they've managed some very favorable hometown discounts (Rinehardt again).

Some chalk that stuff up to no state income tax. To which I say, good for people of Florida and it's a good economics lesson generally applied. If Canadian (and high taxed US states) teams are having a challenge competing due to comparative tax rates, that's the tradeoff for having whatever you get from the taxes. So you have trouble attracting the best talent, but you can get free needles, right? So there's that. You can build attractive place for world class athletes and entrepreneurs and other successful people who work their ass off to be successful (and who give up a lot to do it and absorb a lot of risk to do that), or build an attractive place for intravenous drug use. Tax policy is all about priorities.

[Meds]

Like all dynasties, Florida has learned how to win. Three years in the SCF, 2 victorious. This ability to know how to win is critical to team's success. Edmonton has yet to learn how to win. No doubt a key injury or 2, average, at best, goaltending, play a part. But the ability to bear down and gut out wins, doing the hard things, shift after shift is critical. Florida got rattled last year then went on to lose 3 and let the Oilers back into the series. This year they did not get rattled. Edmonton had no real answer and got rattled falling behind every 1st period.

Florida is a great team. Can they keep the core together? We will see. I think it will be a hard team to walk away from.

The crazy thing is, they have $19M in cap space right now, and their only big tickets needing extensions are Bennett and Ekblad (looking at Marchand as a pure rental). Bobrovsky's $10M also comes off of the cap next season which, coupled with another cap increase, will give them $20+M more to play with.....and Bobrovsky will be 37 when that contract is done. I can't see him getting more than $7M on a one or two year extension at that point.

Florida is looking very very good for years to come.

They've done a great job building the team, for sure. The number of bad contracts is zero -- well, maybe you should never pay a goalie like they do, but its all worth it for two cups (in which he played well). The core guys all should have a few more seasons in the tank. They don't have overperforming ELC's, but they've done a great job squeezing higher quality play from guys that looked like they didn't have more. Another level for Rinehardt. Two more levels out of Bennet. OEL bounced back last year; Schmidt looked decent this run. And they've managed some very favorable hometown discounts (Rinehardt again).

Bobrovsky's $10M was a desperation move to fill a void in the crease that had been longstanding in Florida since they traded Luongo to Vancouver. They had to overpay to get him to accept their offer over the 8 years that Columbus was able to give him. I think the timing was very good for them. When they landed Bobrovsky they were a team that had made the playoffs 3 times in 21 seasons, and only gotten out of the first round one of those times.....they had only ever seen playoff hockey in Sunrise 5 times in 20 years. That overpayment was, in some regards, foresight on the part of Dale Tallon. He grabbed a very good goaltender and locked him up to term just as his team was about to hit their compete window with a player core of Barkov, Huberdeau, and Ekblad, all on team friendly contracts. When Zito took the reins he made more savvy moves that acquired good pieces on cap friendly deals.....Barkov, Ekblad, Tkachuk, Reinhart, Verhaeghe, Jones, and Forsling, are all under 30 and have years left in the tank to coincide with Bobrovsky's $10M disappearing just as the salary cap is getting some decent year over year increases.

Combined with the alleged team culture they have created that has resulted in a very tight knit group, Florida is in a position to remain a dominant force in the league for years to come if they draft and develop shrewdly. I think they can afford one more "all-in" at the trade deadline, but whether they actually need to in order to win is the question.

[Blob Mckenzie]

I called Zito out for doing a good job three or four years ago. Misery Guts and a few others disagreed. Sadly, those posts got lost. He inherited a team with some dent pieces but he has done such a good job supplementing that core with additions like Forsling, Tkachuk, Benny, Jones and Verhage etc....It doesn't hurt that it's a beautiful place to live. Easy selling point.

I don''t see McDavid's comments as calling out the coaches. I think it's more his teammates and management.

[UWSaint]

Combined with the alleged team culture they have created that has resulted in a very tight knit group, Florida is in a position to remain a dominant force in the league for years to come if they draft and develop shrewdly. I think they can afford one more "all-in" at the trade deadline, but whether they actually need to in order to win is the question.

They don't have their next two first rounders, so not sure what they go all in with. They have one of the weakest prospect groups in the league. Not criticizing that -- they built to the apex of the league and have the room to keep it together for awhile -- but they have the barest of non-NHL assets to move. Of course, they built this team in part by bold trading of NHL assets, and I think they'd do it again if needed. I think to stay the team to beat, they are going to need to keep Ekblad or add another top 3 caliber defenseman; its a bigger need (IMO) than re-signing Bennett. That said, it isn't either/or necessarily. The tight knit group, their success, and low taxes all make it more likely their cap will go farther and they can sign these men to better deals than they would accept elsewhere -- and has been pointed out, they have some cap room.

While I think the group is tight, I think there's a bit too much read into the "culture's" influence on the wins and losses in Florida.

Winning breeds cohesion. Cohesion likely contributes a bit to winning, too, but its the cohesion as primary causal agent seems like a marketing narrative, and it sells when you aren't confronted by the counterfactual (losing).

Losing creates tension. (Tension likely contributes to losing -- maybe moreso that cohesion, but losing makes this a positive feedback loop).

Winning buys silence. Pippen can yap about MJ today, but he wasn't doing that in the midst of the Bulls dynasty.

Losing loses an audience. A team can be the best of brothers, finish the season without making the playoffs, and no one cares about how tightly knit they are.

But what I will say is that the closer the group, the more a player will want to stick around. If you like your co-workers, if you feel you are all pulling in the same direction, and you are having success, life's good, keep it that way.

I will also say I get a kick out of the way the "tight" group acted in the finals, and really, throughout the playoffs. Florida (including Maurice) were trolling. Maurice saying a 6-1 win over Toronto was "close" and that Toronto was a really tough opponent. LMFAO. Edmonton's meltdown in game 3 (I think it was game 3) as Marchand and Bennett and others turned the other cheek, and sort of laughed at it while basically winking at the linesmen? Brilliant stuff to not give the Oilers what they wanted and to subtly mock them the whole night.

[UWSaint]

I don''t see McDavid's comments as calling out the coaches. I think it's more his teammates and management.

I saw it as mostly management -- and it wasn't just calling them out. It was negotiation.