MuddyInTheMiddle

I have found the coach to be the biggest factor. Your kid plays for the right coach, they get so much more out of it than just hockey.

1000%! If you are on your 3rd program in 3 years you are either choosing where to play exceptionally badly or you/your kid are the issue. We just left the program that we were in for the last 8 years as my son had an opportunity to play Tier 1, and he jumped at it. About 3 years ago, I did find it helpful to start going to ID skates and other evaluations on nights/times that didn't conflict with our organization. Was always great to get that perspective.

Now that the crazy season(evaluations time) is over, everyone land on the team that they wanted to?

Yup those are the Elite ones that I mentioned; at least their top teams at each age group.

Pretty good sum up there. The only thing that I would add is that puberty is the great equalizer. When the checking starts, you will get some kids who are late puberty develop deep seeded fears of going into the corners, traffic, and along the boards that some of them never seem to recover from. When you start looking at the differences between Tier 1 & 2 levels(AAA & AA) vs. Tier 3(A, A1, B, etc....), you run into the interesting breed of parent called the "letter chaser". It's comical because Tier 1 has become so watered down there are almost 2 levels of Tier 1 which are the truly elite programs like Avalanche, Gulls, etc.....and then the organizations that will use their charter to stamp out as many AAA teams as there sucker parents will to pay 10K to say that their kids play AAA. My kids plays on one of the better AA teams in the local area and that has served him much better than playing on some of those so called AAA teams. Following good coaching and lots of ice time has served us well so far.

Firstly, Tiers 1-4 are largely redundant, and should probably be only 2 Tiers(Generational and Elite or All Star). It's also a little early to be calling someone in their draft year "generational"; who knows if Bedard is going to be a generational talent in the Crosby/McDavid mold or simply just a year in-year out All Star like Jack Hughes projects to be? I also get that this is an Under 23 list so there has to be a level of speculation here, but until Michkov & Will Smith play a game in the NHL, they should not even be on the list. Putting Carlson, Fantilli, and L. Hughes on as Elite/All Stars with a couple of dozen games under their belt is a stretch too. Absolutely hate when I agree with Pete, but I think that he is 100% spot on. The two drafts that the Rangers whiffed on during the rebuild were the Andersson(2017) and Kravtsov(2018) drafts, and in the case of the latter while Bouchard, Dobson, Wahlstrom, or Farabee would all have been very serviceable parts, none are true difference makers in those early draft spots. That has been covered to death here, so no real new insights there. Finally something that I also noticed while typing, is that nobody from either of those drafts(2017 or 2018) that they selected, would have been eligible for this list as they are over 23years old.

I would like to propose a drinking game where every time Pete says "moving the goal posts", everyone reading the thread is required to take a shot.

Incredibly poor cap management. As someone else implied in this thread; the Leafs would have been so much better off turning that 11.5 million per year into a Kreider and Trochek or Fox and Shesterkin. The correct play would have been to flip him for major assets before the season started, and banked that money for a Marner who is a better scorer. Not sure where they go from here, but keep trying to win with the same top heavy team.

I personally love the Keyser Soze-esque myth that he has created here!

If the Islanders would give up Wahlstrom straight up for Zac Jones(or something close to aproximating straight-up), I would do that in a NY minute. I believe the last time they made a trade was almost 14 years ago however, so it probably won't happen. Anyone that wants a laugh, please read the blog article below for the trade proposal that is so absurd it could have come straight from the old Hockey's Future boards. https://eyesonisles.com/2020/02/17/new-york-islanders-rangers-end-trade-embargo-chris-kreider/

Has anyone caught this on Hulu? Stumbled across it with my 13 year old youth hockey playing son last night and it is fricking hilarious. Should almost be required viewing here considering the semi-pro hockey backdrop. Anyone who has ever played even beer league hockey will appreciate the chirping.

No they are not. Crosby, Malkin, Letang, and Karlson all have NMC's. None of those four are getting traded unless they say so. They all re-upped under the premise of "let's keep the band together" as well so I doubt it. BTW, Letang is under contract until he is 41 years old; talk about a diminishing asset, as that contract is not going to age well. Complicating the situation is that they traded a 1st round pick for that Karlson contract and only were able to get 1.5 million retained despite San Jose desperately wanting to get out from underneath it. As is, there is no draft help coming to start the rebuild until the 2025 draft. The only thing that they have that would be considered a tradeable asset are Geuntzel and Petersen's expiring contracts. What is that really getting you? Finally, they are not even going to really have much cap space to sign more than replacement parts until 25-26. It sounds crazy, but Dubas has actually only managed to make a bad situation even worse having been on the job for 6 months.

Anyone else want to set any other parameters to the very basic concept that you can build a team with offense, defense, and goaltending by managing your team's cap correctly?

Twice apparently; if it makes you feel better, I'll let you win your narrow argument, and then you can go back to sniping with Brooks Burner about whatever it is that you were arguing about.