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PLUS/MINUS: Post Draft Trade Rating Edition

June 26, 2016, 12:11 PM ET [80 Comments]
James Tanner
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Since +/- is the NHL's worst stat, I thought it would make sense to appropriate it and make it useful as we review the best and worst of the past week in the NHL.

PLUS: Sure there weren't many massive blockbusters or anything, but the draft had enough excitement and drama to live up to the hype. Leafs getting Matthews, Dubois going third and the Coyotes picking up both Keller and Chychrun all made the draft a great night.

MINUS: The mockery from my wife who thinks watching drafts is one of the most deplorable wastes of time/ losery-dud things a guy can do.

PLUS: The Coyotes, Oilers and Leafs - the three winners of the draft. Coyotes get two top-ten worthy players, the Leafs get the best player and the Oilers somehow manage to fluke their way into another insanely talented high-end player.



MINUS: Lars Eller is signed for two more years at a very reasonable $3.5 million and is probably a better player than Andrew Shaw. Both players average about 30 points a year, and while Shaw is younger, he's also more expensive and worse defensively.

It's not a terrible trade, because Shaw is younger and he brings maybe a bit more fire or whatever, and maybe he can improve a bit, but still, why make a move for a worse defensive player who costs more?



PLUS: Thinking about how many Deloreans there are in November 1955. There is the one Doc and Marty come back in, one hidden in the cave, the one Biff stole, and the one Marty originally brought.

PLUS: Solid move by Chayka picking up the classic "attitude problem" kid from the Lightning for 50 cents on the dollar. The Coyotes need an offensive right-shooting defensemen and the Lighting seem to think everyone has an attitude problem.

If he didn't have one of the best teams in hockey, I would delight in ripping the sour and petulant Yzerman in this column weekly.

PLUS: The Leafs sending Harrington to Columbus for Rychel was a sweet move. I am a huge fan of loading up on talented first round picks, and adding Rychel to a group that already includes Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Kapanen is pretty nice.

MINUS: The White Sox hit seven home runs and lost yesterday. How is that even possible?

MINUS: People just won't give a new guy a break. Despite the Coyotes having to take big risks to make their plan work on a smaller budget in a worse market than anyone else, people were so quick to trash John Chayka for his creative, intelligent acquisition of the #16 pick.

So many snobby people doing math in a vacuum, tweeting out their condescending, know-it-all takes. Meanwhile, John Chayka, who has the job he has because of his math background obviously knows that in most cases it makes sense to trade down from 16 to 20 and take the 53rd pick.

But anyone who works in probabilities also needs to know when to realize that a weird situation has developed. You almost never get a chance at a Chychrun at #16 so it was worth a shot.

Taking Datsyuk's contract is another thing people don't seem to get. By sending the Wings Vitale, the Coyotes save over a million real dollars and take a hit to their cap they weren't ever going to use anyways. They have to pay zero real dollars to Datsyuk and so they win again. Doesn't matter at all whether they help Detroit or not unless they meet in the Final one day.



MINUS: Huge MINUS to Hockey Twitter for being so negative, sour, know-it-all, condescending and snarky as to be nearly unbearable.

PLUS: The Leafs acquisition of Frederik Andersen. They are paying him around the 20th highest salary in the league, which is even lower when you think most of those were signed earlier and whatever $5 million is worth gets lower each year because of inflation/cap rising.

Since F.A is clearly better than the 20th best goalie, I say good deal.

MINUS: The Sabres GM Tim Murray. What is this guy thinking? Burns a third on Vesey, last year he burned a first on Lehner, overpaid for Ryan O'Reilly and Evander Kane and now makes the ridiculous mistake of trading Pysyk for Kulikov.

I hope I'm wrong cause Buffalo is a team I like to cheer for, but Murray seems to be a terrible GM.

Florida, on the other hand, already has a great core of a team and now they have Pysyk and Keith Yandle on the blueline, two great pickups. I was hoping Yandle would come back to Arizona, but good for him on the sweet contract.

PLUS: Today we are showcasing three of the greatest albums of all-time.

1975's Tonight's the Night is one of the best records Neil Young put out during a 70s hot-streak of amazing albums that is almost unprecedented in its back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to back-ness. It's one of the more interesting and listenable-today records of the classic rock era.

And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead is sort of a hardcore-ish band that put out one good album of weirdly catchy aggressive music called Source Tags and Codes. It's from 2002 and makes my all-time list.

Also, Skylarking by the world's most criminally underappreciated genius band, XTC, is a must own for any self-respecting music fan.



PLUS: The Coyotes need to go for James Reimer. Mike Smith is a garbage monster, Louis Domingue is a long-shot and Reimer is crazily underrated.

If the Coyotes want to compete, and they do, they should offer James Reimer a good contract and their starting job.

PLUS: The Flames adding Brian Elliot was an obvious coup. But also getting Tkachuk to go with Bennet, Gaudreau and Monhan is pretty awesome. When you consider that their back-end has three +++ defensemen it seems like an exciting time to be a Flames fan. Then you consider that Brian Burke looks like a pre-rehab Nick Nolte, look at his career in Toronto and his obviously outdated view on hockey and you have to wonder how they'll screw it up.

PLUS: Only one week until this Stamkos crap is behind us. It's fun and all that such a good player is a UFA, but the non-stop talk about it wears pretty thin.
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