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The Official 2026 Off-Season Thread: Revenge of the Nerds

He said all the right things, but then did all the wrong things. The opposite things.

And he continues to say the right things. Yeah I think I'm done being duped by this con artist. Simmons deserves a statue.
 
The one thing I would say is that it's still early in the 'putting the all the pieces in the puzzle' process...yesterday looks awful but it might be recontextualised differently come next deadline.

The Habs brass got shredded with Fs for drafting a bunch of big lugs a week ago....if one took that day out of context, you'd think the only analytics the Habs care about is bench pressing.... but that identical scouting staff drafted Hutson, LJ Mooney and a bunch of other smurfs in previous years.

TL;DR too early to judge (but not too early to yell from the rooftops if you want)
 
hockeylover said:
Bizarre bizarre. I liked him because I supppsed he WOULD big game hunt and yet…
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Yeah. The Raddysh move and all the Werenski rumours raised my hopes on him doing more big game hunting even more.

Even the Bobrovsky move, which I absolutely hate, can fall under that “big game hunting” category too if you ignore all the downsides & probabilities, look at his big name & Cup-winning pedigree and imagine he is currently a good, true workhorse starting goalie.

But the absolute last I ever expected was this drunken spending spree on several 4th liners.
 
If he didn't blow most of their cap space and fill out the roster with overpaid fourth liners with zero upside, I'd agree with the patient approach. Like in a normal case and a normal July 1st, I'd be all in on being patient and giving it time to judge. But there isn't a single follow up move that will justify anything he did yesterday, it goes against all data.

I give credit where credit is due on his pre July 1st moves. I will exercise my right to blast these moves.
 
hockeylover said:
gonna need to see some big game hunting here to bring me back on board.
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As you should... but as you know big game hunting involves waiting for the prey to reveal itself. That could be next week or in November when some of these overconfident teams stumble out of the gate
 
Preston said:
If he didn't blow most of their cap space and fill out the roster with overpaid fourth liners with zero upside, I'd agree with the patient approach. Like in a normal case and a normal July 1st, I'd be all in on being patient and giving it time to judge. But there isn't a single follow up move that will justify anything he did yesterday, it goes against all data.

I give credit where credit is due on his pre July 1st moves. I will exercise my right to blast these moves.
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100%
 
zeke said:
and it's not like Raddysh isn't still a massive gamble.
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Was just thinking that. All of this other shit puts a whole lot of pressure on getting Raddysh...and Bobrovsky, right.

When pumping Raddysh's tires for the last few months, it was under the assumption that we could afford to, and needed to take a swing on the level of performance he'd shown. Well, we can't afford for him to not be something resembling that guy now.
 
Yeah, the floor is high with Raddysh.

Not so much with Bob, which is why it's such a puzzling move, to everyone on this board at least. Chaykes thinks he landed the current top goalie in the world and the media is singing his praises for it.
 
Raddysh and Bob are big swings with high end expectations.

There is risk but this free agency class only had risk at the top end.

I guess they could’ve signed more 4th liners instead.
 
The Raddysh risk has upside so you can live with it. Spending $20m on 7 fourth liners doesn't have any upside.

But yeah, if he's more of a 4 or struggles defensively and is just a big shot and pp specialist, the summer all of a sudden looks way worse. I think he'll be fine tho.

My biggest problem is, there's a path to this team not being very good. I wish they set their floor higher, they had every opportunity to. And yeah, too much hinges on Raddysh, when as ME said, it didn't have to.
 
I don't feel the Raddysh move was very risky. Given the price, it ended up being cheap, and a great bet.

The risk taken on Bob will perplex me for approximately 3 years. It has the potential to be an incredible payoff, or a disaster, and I usually shy away from plays like that and opt for something more conservative.
 
I don't think you're ever getting value out of that bob deal. They paid for the brand name and ignored age and performance. I think it's a bit optimistic to even hope for something resembling his 2022-2023 season, which would be close to fair value. Personally I'm just hoping he's average and can eat ~50 games or so. That would be a huge win.
 
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