Eastern Conference: (2) Washington vs. (7) Rangers

[lanky]

playmaker26 wrote:

Yes but my point is with the management. Tampa Bay and Atlanta need to clean house with personnel before I give them any chance to really improve.

why? Atlanta made avery good pick in bogosian, and has eased him into the NHL well. They have Ron Hainsey as a value defender to keep the heat off of bogosian a little bit while he matures. They also have kovalchuk, little, enstrom, and two really good young goalies in pavelic and lehtonen.

Throw in the fact that they\'re due for another good draft pick this year, and i think atlanta management is doing just fine.

As far as tampa bay goes... i understand there were some hiccups early on with their transition, but i think they made some really solid decisions down the stretch. 1) they didn\'t trade vinny lecavalier. 2) steve stamkos was brought along properly by 3) the addition of rick tocchet. 4) they have a top 3 draft pick this year...

i really don\'t see how these teams are in that bad a position when you really sit back and think about it... managerial or otherwise. Sure, TB would probably prefer to still have boyle instead of malone, but malone is definitely a tocchet type of player... i wouldn\'t be surprised if he rebounds next year for the lightning.

The only thing that i would even consider as a negative for these two teams is their markets. If they don\'t have the money, then that could possibly cause problems down the road, but i think they are in a very good position (as long as they stick to their guns), to be very good teams within 3 years.

When you consider that 4 of the 5 southeastern teams have been to the stanley cup finals (2 of them have won the cup), since 1995... you have to believe that they can get their ducks in a row and put together some good teams.

BTW, no other division has had 4 different representatives in the stanley cup finals since 1995. The southeast is the only one... just for the record.

[playmaker26]

lanky wrote:

playmaker26 wrote:

Yes but my point is with the management. Tampa Bay and Atlanta need to clean house with personnel before I give them any chance to really improve.

why? Atlanta made avery good pick in bogosian, and has eased him into the NHL well. They have Ron Hainsey as a value defender to keep the heat off of bogosian a little bit while he matures. They also have kovalchuk, little, enstrom, and two really good young goalies in pavelic and lehtonen.

Throw in the fact that they\'re due for another good draft pick this year, and i think atlanta management is doing just fine.

As far as tampa bay goes... i understand there were some hiccups early on with their transition, but i think they made some really solid decisions down the stretch. 1) they didn\'t trade vinny lecavalier. 2) steve stamkos was brought along properly by 3) the addition of rick tocchet. 4) they have a top 3 draft pick this year...

i really don\'t see how these teams are in that bad a position when you really sit back and think about it... managerial or otherwise. Sure, TB would probably prefer to still have boyle instead of malone, but malone is definitely a tocchet type of player... i wouldn\'t be surprised if he rebounds next year for the lightning.

The only thing that i would even consider as a negative for these two teams is their markets. If they don\'t have the money, then that could possibly cause problems down the road, but i think they are in a very good position (as long as they stick to their guns), to be very good teams within 3 years.

When you consider that 4 of the 5 southeastern teams have been to the stanley cup finals (2 of them have won the cup), since 1995... you have to believe that they can get their ducks in a row and put together some good teams.

BTW, no other division has had 4 different representatives in the stanley cup finals since 1995. The southeast is the only one... just for the record.

You named the only positive parts in the Atlanta organization. They need a lot more to turn things around.

Braydon Coburn for Alexei Zhitnik really turned out well. That\'s obviously the worst move they made but they have made other bad ones. Atlanta went from a promising team to being back where they are used to being...in the basement.

You can say whatever you want but Tampa\'s management is easily in the bottom 5 in the league.

I could be wrong. I could be right. Only time will tell B)

[lanky]

playmaker26 wrote:

You named the only positive parts in the Atlanta organization. They need a lot more to turn things around.

Braydon Coburn for Alexei Zhitnik really turned out well. That\'s obviously the worst move they made but they have made other bad ones. Atlanta went from a promising team to being back where they are used to being...in the basement.

You can say whatever you want but Tampa\'s management is easily in the bottom 5 in the league.

I could be wrong. I could be right. Only time will tell B)

very true... only time will tell... but recal that other managers in the league have made boneheaded moves too... but we\'re not talking about disovling their teams...

Your buddy in Phili with his Briere contract was a pretty damn bad decision. Sather in NYR with his gomez, redden, drury contracts were all pretty bad decisions. Montreal management made some pretty poor decisions the past few years as well.

You highlight (as far as i can tell), one bad decision on atlanta\'s part. Coburn is an example of a player that wasn\'t progressing in their system (not just their NHL team, but their farm as well), and so they traded him when they got to the playoffs for the first time ever, for a veteran defender.

I can\'t really fault them for wanting to show their fans that they were committed to the playoff push. Sure, it looks like a mistake now, but they made the decision to try and improve their team that year (also acquired Keith Tkachuk if I remember).

Other than that, they made good decisions in 1) not resigning tkachuk (which would have costed them huge in conditional draft picks), 2) have kept their salaries of their players relatively low and contracts relatively short, 3) have had good success in the draft.

As far as hossa goes... i don\'t think that they could have kept hossa if Pittsburgh couldn\'t, and they got a kings ransom for him. Heatley needed a change of scenery after his accident so you can\'t blame that on management... and savard was under-rated by everyone in the league when they let him go... and was absolutely terrible in the defensive end and had a terrible attitude problem when he was in atlanta (granted this is probably because he was not coached properly).

So outside of the zhitnik and savard instances... what has atlanta really done wrong in the last several years? I mean what team hasn\'t done something at the trade deadline that didn\'t turn out to be that great in hindsight? What team hasn\'t let a UFA walk that they shouldn\'t have?

I just think you\'re being a little unjust in your analysis of atlanta management in particular. They probably should have stuck to their guns a couple of years ago when they made the playoffs (instead of trading for zhitnik and tkachuk)... if they had done so, they\'d probably be a much better team right now. But with that said, you can\'t really blame a team that has never been to the playoffs before for going out and trying to show it\'s fans (and it\'s franchise player(s)), that they are committed to trying for a stanley cup.

At least I don\'t fault them for that.

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TB was a mess early this year, but with rookie management, you often expect mistakes to happen. If tampa has a problem it\'s the new owner... because the owner was the one that decided to go with a guy as their GM who had never had his hands in franchise management before.