Bryan Bickell

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Well like I said, what are you defining "proven" as? What is he defining "proven" as? Because what he's saying is that it's "nearly impossible" to win the Cup, especially in recent years, without a really good or great goalie. When it's a fact that, especially in those recent years he's talking about, most teams who have gotten to the Final and all of them who've won the Cup are the teams that have given themselves the best advantage in the game and that's outshooting and possessing the puck more often than their opponents. That is exactly what the "rest of the players" do. That's a TEAM effect, not a goalie effect. The goalie can't be attributed to that.

For as much as fans in the NHL love to go on about how hockey is all about the team and working together, they seem to push that to the wayside in some of the more important aspects of viewing and analyzing the game for some reason. None more so than when talking about goalies.

Hawks won a cup with Niemi, an unproven goalie. Crow was in Rockford that year. Niemi played well enough for the Hawks to win the cup. That was a successful experiment. Going forward I wouldn't feel too good about experimenting with the goalie position, even with a roster full of players that "can make the goalie".
 

Variable

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If I'm not mistaken since the seedings were a couple of years ...

We don't know what could've happened. I remember quite a bit of people at IHN during that time were sure the Canucks weren't going to get past the next round after they beat the Hawks. Let alone get to Game 7 of the Final. Being able to keep Ladd would've been a huge help during the playoffs, especially with Bolland being injured through the first few games of that series. That would've been a differently played series at the very least.

You can keep saying that amount of difference in cap space is negligible, but a million or so dollars worth of cap space this off season and the Hawks keep Leddy and all of a sudden the d pairings look quite a bit better instead of having that carousal of shit of the third pair. I don't buy that he was being moved regardless this season, it was only because someone had to be moved because they were over the cap and no one wanted to take Versteeg. With his cap hit and his age and potential (and no fucking NTC that Stan was giving out like they were going out of style) he was by far the easiest to move out of the potential players that could've been.

In regards to the contract for Crawford, I answered that question, as I have before, from the aspect of what I would give him. Around 4 million is my cut off for goalie contracts with a team like the Hawks. Because you can still move a contract like that if you need the cap space or things aren't working out. After that, once you start getting into or 6 or 7 million dollar contracts, and especially the longer the contract goes for, it's not a contract that can easily be moved.

As far as the roster for next season goes with your scenario of losing both Bickell and Crawford with no cap hit in return (which would be awesome and also a miracle) tack on a million more to Kruger and you probably keep him a few more years. He's an RFA,as are most of those players you listed as having to be replaced. The hardest spot to replace would be Oduya's, because teams seem to go bat shit crazy over mediocre d-men in free agency.

But you're gonna have to eventually play guys who have "no proof" at this level at some point and I'd rather keep experienced forward depth (or blue line depth if the scenario is Seabrook being moved instead, which would be even worse), especially players that are strong in puck possession in that to help those players with "no proof" along than to lose that AND rely more on your goalie at the same time AND expect more from those types of players and rookies right off the bat because of it.

And that's probably where this going to end again because you don't think a team has that big an effect on their goalie.
 

Variable

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Hawks won a cup with Niemi, an unproven goalie. Crow was in Rockford that year. Niemi played well enough for the Hawks to win the cup. That was a successful experiment. Going forward I wouldn't feel too good about experimenting with the goalie position, even with a roster full of players that "can make the goalie".

How'd you feel about Crawford going into the 12'-13' season? Because I know I didn't understand a lot of the shit people were giving him the season before, I still believed for the most part he was an average to above average goalie that went as his team went along, and even I had my doubts after that Phoenix series.
 

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I think the people closest to how good Niemi really was or was going to be let it be known when a cup winning goalie was basically let go in favor of keeping hammer.
 

BlackHawkPaul

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And he uses both of his feet when skating!

bryan_bickell.jpg
 

Ares

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Bryan Bickell shoots lefty...just in case anyone was curious to hear a little about Bryan Bickell.

Bigfoot threads can't be about Bigfoot.... or he will run off into the woods again and we won't even catch a glimpse of him until June.
 

MassHavoc

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I heard Bicks once ate an entire bag of pucks thinking they were urinal cakes.
 
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Bigfoot

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Jackman is like oh shit its a Bigfoot
 

LordKOTL

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My favorite teams
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  1. Chicago Blackhawks
Looks like he should have made a side trip to Voodoo Doughnuts and gotten a maple blazer:

mapleblazerblunt.png
 

Tater

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Why have I not seen this before... what the fuck is going on here... is he trying to dive, or really just that shitty of a skater.

How could you have NOT seen it? And yes, his balance really is the bad. Count how many times per game he's on his ass.
 

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