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2024-2025 NHL Thread

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I normally enjoy watching the draft, but tonight was not one of those nights. The way the NHL has decentralized the format for this year's draft has made it such a fucking mess. Over 2 hours in and we're not even halfway past it. I had to turn it off, and it's such a shame because it's been one hell of a wild draft FWIW.
 
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Toronto was able to ink Matthew Knies to an extension earlier. 6 years at $7.75M. Love this, it's great value for him! :)

Also, there are talks of Toronto going after Vegas on account of tampering, according to what Elliotte Friedman said earlier on his 32 Thoughts podcast. This is basically the rundown of what went on.
  • Marner to Vegas has been going on for at least a year. Last year around the draft in a possible deal Toronto wanted Theodore and Vegas said no.

  • Trade deadline: Marner refused to waive to go Carolina. There were talks of a 3-way deal in order to send Marner to Vegas, Rantanen to Dallas but they couldn't make it work for Carolina with the right package, and Marner exercised his NTC.

  • Draft combine rolls around & Vegas approaches the Leafs saying they were interested in acquiring Marner's rights.

  • Vegas announces that Alex Pietrangelo is going to be on LTIR and miss the entirety of next season, which is pretty conveneient for them given they needed to clear cap space to make room for Mitch.

  • There were talks Nic Roy was involved in a potential trade, possibly Hague too.

  • The rumored extension number for Marner hovers around 4 years at $12 if Vegas were successful in acquiring his rights.

  • Says a lot of teams and GMs think the league is about to punish someone for tampering and they're gonna go down hard. They sent another memo last week. Sounds like they're waiting to make an example out of someone.
 

canadaguy

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Yet somehow bettman will try to tell us this is good for the sport
 
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I guess there is no need to watch hockey for the next 3 years....
They could very well threepeat next year. The players have bought into this and it shows. Bennett could've got north of $10M, but stayed. Ekblad took a major discount to remain with the team when he was projected to make double digits on the open market. I guess the no state tax factor comes into play as well. Them being a cup contender, the no state tax, and the warm weather will make them a very attractive market to players for a while.
 

Jon

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Oh, for sure. If you're a member of the Bettman brigade, you're allowed to get off with these things.
It wasn't long ago that cap circumvention like this led to investigations and break ups of super teams. I mean, the Lightning were recently looked into for this very thing. Well, more the LTIR thing, but this is the SAME thing.

You can't keep this team together without shenanigans, and you can't circumvent the shenanigans without the league being in on it. They just choose who they want to enforce it against.
 

Jon

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I mean, here's evidence....


The first sentence:
The NHL has warned its teams that trades involving injured players will be "closely scrutinized" for potential cap circumvention ahead of the March 3 trade deadline, a source told ESPN.

This is PRECISELY what the Panthers did this year and they weren't scrutinized by the league at ALL.
 
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It wasn't long ago that cap circumvention like this led to investigations and break ups of super teams. I mean, the Lightning were recently looked into for this very thing. Well, more the LTIR thing, but this is the SAME thing.

You can't keep this team together without shenanigans, and you can't circumvent the shenanigans without the league being in on it. They just choose who they want to enforce it against.
Vegas was allowed to get away with it too, we can't forget all the times they've circumvented the cap either. The league should've slammed the hammer down long ago.
 

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Vegas was allowed to get away with it too, we can't forget all the times they've circumvented the cap either. The league should've slammed the hammer down long ago.
Another warm weather city that was undeserving of a team and was a Bettman baby.

Futurama Im Shocked GIF
 

canadaguy

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This is PRECISELY what the Panthers did this year and they weren't scrutinized by the league at ALL
They were! The NHL director of hockey operations showed up to the Panthers assistant gms house and found everything to be perfectly OK.
 
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canadaguy

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In fact it looks like he was quite thorough. He showed up multiple times, even on holidays!
 
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Man, FA this year easily has to be the worst one I've ever seen. There weren't many big names out there to begin with, so it was already a weak class compared to any other year. Marner, Boeser, Bennett, Ekblad, and Tavares were among the bigger names to hit the FA pool, but then a lot of those deals got done before today even hit.

-Bennett, Ekblad, and Marchand all took discounts to stay in Florida.
-Tavares re-signed with the Maple Leafs.
-Marner got dealt to Vegas in a sign & trade.
-Boeser ultimately decided to remain a Canuck.

What we were left with was by far the weakest & most boring classes to date. Teams either did nothing or drank too much of the stupid juice (the contracts the defensemen got, holy sweet fuck!).
 
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Jon

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Bad news, hockey fans. NHL seems to be leaning more towards sticking with the decentralized format for the draft.

IT TOOK THEM A FULL HOUR TO GET THROUGH THE FIRST FIVE PICKS! :facepalm


So they are actively making decisions to make their product worse. Got it.
 
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