mbrg

Just because you're the kingadmin here doesn't mean you get to talk about yourself in the 3rd person constantly. It's a bit over the top.

He could always apply for a MasterCard.

Not April 1st yet. You're a week early. Just put the rest of the team in bubble wrap already.

There wasn't any great hockey reason for my suggestion that he play one more year at UND before joining the Moose other than he has years to go before he might be ready, might as well not use up a year of his entry level contract while he's on his hockey journey. If the Jets think there is lots to gain by having him work with McCambridge one year sooner, so be it.

Well I've only seen him play one game, so I'm not going to pretend I've written the scouting report for the Jets on him. But he was already a Jets prospect, so I did pay very close attention to him. The bigger problem... OKAY, TIMEOUT!!! THE N AND THE B SHOULD NOT BE PLACED SO CLOSE TOGETHER. HOLY CRAP I'M GLAD I RE-READ THAT SENTENCE!!! ...the bigger problem is that the NCAA has long clamped down on the kind of over-physicality that we see up here in Junior games, from fights (yes Virginia, there can be hockey without fighting), skirmishes in front of the net after every whistle, to even just trying to run opponents thru the boards. So his physicality on the ice can only be compared the other players in that game, who are also playing a meeker style of hockey. But he compared quite well, won every physical matchup he was engaged in, and threw the only noteworthy hit in that game. I'd say he moves the puck well thru the neutral zone, has a very good shot, average puck handling skills and very average skating ability. The reason I'd say I didn't think he's ready is it looked like players with above average speed would be able to burn him with regularity and I didn't get the sense that he really took command of play in his own end very well. The ice was fairly tilted though, and not a lot of play took place in UND's end, so it might be a matter of limited opportunities. At that level of hockey, guys with size or skill often stand out because they are playing against other teenagers, but that advantage is gone when they hit the NHL. Poolman had a decent physical advantage over his opponent, but if I removed that from the equation it looked like there was still a lot of work to do. People want to compare him to Buff because of similarities in their career paths, but I'd sooner compare him to Melchiori based on what I saw. Maybe he'll play in the NHL someday, maybe not. But he needs a lot more development time from what I saw, and there isn't a great reason to rush him from the Souix to the Moose right away. And yes, since he's not a LHD, we might as well just chop him up and use him for fuel.

Poolman's not ready. Another year at UND, two seasons with the Moose after that, then maybe. He seemed pretty well rounded in his skill set, but everything needs to move up a few notches before any talk about a Jets' roster spot should happen. But....I'd probably have said the same thing about Copp before this season. Actually, I'll probably still say the same thing about Copp at the end of this season.

Years ago I played a season of senior with a guy who'd I'd had a chance to watch/coach when he was in his teens. He was a skilled player who was fairly soft, shied away from contact as much as possible. He got a tryout with the Winkler Flyers but couldn't crack their lineup as a rookie based on his skill. That's the way it can go with those teams, not a lot of spots for rookies if there haven't been many vets move out from the prior season. He was told outright, you're not going to get a spot on this roster unless it's as the role of enforcer. I don't think he'd been in a fight in his life before that. He wanted to play, that was his only in, so he said yes. He got wailed on a lot at the beginning, but he kept stepping up cause that was his job. He got better at fighting eventually, and as time passed he moved up from the 4th to the 3rd line. I think he finished his career there as their 2nd line winger. But fighting was his only in. It wasn't that long ago that the cure for getting punched in the head was sniffing smelling salts and getting back out there. And if a guy flopped and flailed around on his way back to the bench, the arena would have a big laugh. Commonplace stuff just 20 years ago.

What you are seeing is the value of giving a player time in the minors. Kosmachuk is playing a really simple game right now. He gets the puck. He gets his head up quickly. He surveys the ice quickly. He makes a decision quickly. He makes an accurate pass. He gets on his horse. The only thing complicated about what he's doing is the speed he's doing it at, and all that is about the reps he's gotten with the Moose and the time he's been allowed to slowly build in his progression to this moment. It's probably also given him the confidence to try and thread the needle with passes that have gone thru some pretty tight spaces - confidence that many players in his position would have ignored and gone with a safer play instead. I don't get to watch every minute of every game, but of the parts I've seen, Kosmachuk has pushed play forward while being largely mistake free. He's impressed me so far.

Time to let Ottawa know that they can continue to pursue this matter if they want, but any compensation given to them will immediately have to be passed on from them to Toronto, the team they lifted Maas from without giving any compensation.

Pick one rule - pass interference - and dissect the crap out of it with coaches, GMs, players and refs involved, until there is finally one easily understood standard for what constitutes pass interference that will be called consistently in every game, from the start of the season to the end, regardless of which officiating crew is handling the game. Watch a thousand plays together and discuss what the call should have been and why. Is there wording that is confusing? Figure out what you want to express and change it. Any contact of any kind is pass interference? Of course it isn't. Take the time to realize how stupid this would be in practise BEFORE you announce it to the world as your new standard, then quietly backtrack over the next two months. It blows my mind that people are encouraged to write in and suggest rule changes every ******* offseason. Holy **** the CFL can be a joke sometimes. Spend that time working on just getting better at doing the stuff you should have been doing better all along. I apologize for the profanity; that is not normally how I would express myself. I realize some of you may not have been exposed to those kinds of asterixes before.

Needs his own cop show immediately. "Foketi!!! The captain wants to see you, now!!!" "Hand over your badge and gun, Foketi!!! You're suspended!!!"

I'm still not sure what you're arguing. Stempniak is better than a bunch of players currently on our roster. That isn't some revelation. Does that mean they should have signed Stempniak? Why? To what end purpose? Stempniak is a perfectly good 3rd line player, 2nd line on a weaker team. So we sign him and then what? We don't play Ehlers? Lowry doesn't get a second year of pro experience under his belt? Armia doesn't get called up? Copp doesn't get experience? Every other year Chevy has taken a flyer on a low-cost player or two because our young guys weren't ready to play in the NHL yet and we had roster spots to fill. And that's why they were always signed to one or two year deals - so they were not obstructing a roster spot for one of the young guys when they became ready. What offseason signings did the Jets make this year where the Jets could have accomplished the same thing with Stempniak and instead chose to go with a different player? Re-signing Peluso? So Stempniak is a guy we bring in to be an enforcer, sit in the press box for 40 games and play 5 minutes a night the other 40? Signing Fraser? So Stempniak is a guy who is going to take a cheap contract, play on the Moose most of the year and be ready to fill in for injuries, and get moved back down without getting claimed by another team? These are the actual roles for these players, not just a reflection of our surprise that they aren't Stamkos in disguise. Stempniak is too good a player for those roles. This season was a big part of development for the young players. Draft and development. It's a process. Look at what happened with Lowry this year. Growth is not a straight line trending up, and the time it takes for each player will be different. Stempniak is a decent enough player and I would have been fine with re-signing him. The young guys were finally considered ready enough to bring on-stream in 2.0. Any playing time given to Stempniak would come at their expense. The absence of his 20 goals is a short term pain for long term gain.

If he is still on Montreal's neg list now, at the beginning of March in the year 2016, then Jim Popp should no longer be considered an example of a good CFL GM.

Correct, they are not. That was the "and whomever else". I didn't think naming them all was necessary, but if it is, then also Matt Fraser. Also, that Cormier guy. So moving past that, you think the Jets should have signed Stempniak at free agency so he could be: a) played on the 4th line, and/or b ) be traded 5 months later at the deadline for picks? That certainly isn't the kind of vision I want my GM wasting his time on, but you know what they say - keep your eyes focused on the small picture.

Only if he wants to. He's useful, even by NHL standards. It's just the expectations people have of him are way off. It's time to ignore the part where he was a top 10 pick. The body of work is there and he's never going to be that player. If we're rearranging the draft in hindsight, he's a 3rd rounder that pays off. Like Lowry. Some are still waiting for him to blossom, not accepting that he's full-on Mayim Bialik already.

Never has a player hit expectations so dead-center as Burmistrov has this year. Without checking his stats, I'll assume he's on pace for about 8 goals. Maybe 12 assists? Playing with different linemates without ever finding real chemistry with any of them? Moments of looking really good in between large stretches of invisibility? That is the Burmistrov bullseye. Not sure what all the fuss about him, Stempniak, and whomever else is about. They all have one thing in common - they are not part of the Jets long-term plan. If it's not clear to some, the Jets chose to start the growth process with their young players this year. Maybe Stempniak gives us 2-4 more wins over the course of the season. Which amounts to a big bowl of whoopdedoo. And comes at the expense of the future.

Left-Thumbed Intermediate Rover. Defenceman was way too non-specific of a position for today's NHL.

Typo, or fantastic play on words?

I'm not familiar with the Amazon one you are asking about, but like Bannatyne said, you can get a USD card from Canadian banks. CIBC offers a US Visa card, $35 annual fee. If you have a US funds account with them you can pay the card off without ever dealing with exchange issues. Of course this requires you to have US money in that US account, not something most Canadians do.

And I have yet to see anything from him in the NHL that makes me think he should be wearing that title around his neck. He's done some incredible things in junior, but every time he got an opportunity to show something in Tampa, he did not shine. Would I give up Ehlers for him? Woof. Ehlers has shown he can shine playing against men. Drouin so far has only shown he can dominate playing against other boys. Giving up proven players for a very unproven one? Approach with great caution, and don't get caught up in hype.

Positivity bully? I was shooting for logic enforcer.

The contract Ladd will get now will be more expensive than the one he was due to get when Chicago traded him away the first time because they couldn't afford him. And Byfuglien. That would have to be the hometown discount to end all hometown discounts for him to fit financially on that roster next season. Speaking of his hometown, I wonder if Vancouver is a possible landing spot for him once free agency rolls around.

His version is much better though - the media has been lying to us. Just imagine the scene in early 2015 - Chevy and Ladd's agent are together in Chevy's office, watching Weekend at Bernie's... Chevy: "We plan on making no attempt to re-sign Ladd. We do not want him. I repeat, we do not want him." Agent: "That's fine. He does not want to be here. So how should we proceed?" Chevy: "Every once in a while I'll leak out a lie. Something about us talking." Agent: "Alright. And I'll leak out a random dollar amount or term to one of those douchenozzles at TSN." Chevy: "Why do they only hire ex-Leafs for their panels?" Agent: "I have no idea. Ready for Weekend at Bernie's 2? I have to do something for all this billable hours I'm going to pretend to use on this." Chevy: "You know I'm always game for some more Bernie." Agent: "But what should we do if someone gets wise to us? You know, doesn't take what the media says at face value?" Chevy: "I don't know. A man that wise and perceptive? I don't think one exists." Agent: "Alright. A year and a half of fake negotiations, here we come. Pass the popcorn."

You feel any of this is incorrect?

Blue Jackets are a great example. Do the Oilers have any of their 3 dozen future superstars under long term contracts yet? If not, they might not want to take away the flexibility they will need to lock up Hall and Eberle and McJesus and Nugent Hopkins and the rest of them. But they sure could use a leader.