My point being, they traded away pretty much the exact same type of player, only better...

Oh well. It's in the past. We didn't exactly lose in that trade..Florida put Grabner on waivers and got claimed by the Islanders.

They basically "gave away" a 30+ goal scorer for free, so sucks for them :troll:

grabner admitted himself that he wasn't prepared for training camp with florida. he also knew that the islanders are basically the last bus stop of the NHL so he did things right.

He also was given an appropriate role and given the icetime as well. He would have never seen that in Vancouver or Florida for that matter.

I love how everyone automatically assumes that theres no possible way Grabner would of put up the same #s if he were in Vancouver, but no one knows that for sure. Yeah he played for the Islanders but he still played against the same teams everyone else played against and still was able to score 34 Goals and thats pretty impressive. Whats more impressive is that he barely had any PP icetime and the majority of his goals were at Even Strength. He only averaged 15mins a game, which is basically 3rd line minutes. When Raymond went down he would of easily played in our top 6 no problem. This guy has world class speed, and theres not many people that can match his acceleration. When he got traded away i thought it was a huge loss, but i thought it was all part of a bigger plan come playoffs. But seeing Ballard not being used like he should of, it seems like the trade didnt pan out great for us, but MGs intentions were in the right place though

Exactly. The whole "Well he played for the Islanders on a top 2 line" doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying that any 3rd or 4th line rookie will be a 30 goal scorer if you just move him to a top 2 line? Makes no sense to me, and sounds more like a homer excuse than anything. Canucks and Panthers both fucked up with this guy, and then the Canucks go and draft a similar, but not as good, player... still makes no sense to me, homer excuses or not.

Have you guys seen the projected realignment proposals floating around? here's one that cuts it down to 4 division, moving teams to proper timezones (top chart is the current alignment)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/sp/editorial_i...h_playoffs.jpg

If that happens, so much for another easy Presidents' trophy.. Instead of playing pathetic NW Division teams like Edmonton and Calgary, they'll be playing San Jose, Anaheim, and LA all the time (LA is going to be scary starting next season IMO)

South Division looks brutal, too. Looks to me like Boston would benefit from this realignment most... Pretty weak division, but that will be 2 seasons from now so who knows...

I really like the idea of having the first round of the playoffs all division battles. Should make for some nice rivalries again :)

^ why are colorado n winnipeg highlighted?

florida is gonna get raped in the south division lol

bring back the smythe division!!

i'd love to see the nhl go back to 4 divisions.

another change i'd love to see but will probably never happen is to get 3 points for a win, and only 1 for an otl.

i said that on page 44 :p

Or better yet, 2 points for a win, 0 points for a loss, whether it's OT or not. Get rid of the shoot out.

4 divisions = inevitable expansion to balance the league at 32 teams.

The "easy" and "hard" divisions will be balanced over time. I mean, until the last two years, the NW was full of contenders. That's now the Pacific, where Dallas was the only one to miss the playoffs and only by one game.

I don't care...as long as travel is balanced. Ridiculous that NY teams drive down the road but Detroit has to fly halfway across the continent almost every night.

The NHL fucking loves the shootout. It's a hit in the States, I'm sure.

Fixed.

The only way the Panthers are competitive is if they switch to the AHL.

Then how about 2 points for a win, 1 point for tie, 0 points for loss, even in OT

So going into shoot out, each team has 1 point. The shootout winner gets HALF a point. Shootout loser still gets 1 point

I just don't like the idea of a team fully benefiting from just winning a shootout after not being able to beat the other team in a game + OT.

i wouldnt mind that at all... no offense to any panthers fan reading...

hmm any chance of florida maybe being the next team to relocate?

I imagine the next team will be Phoenix once the city gets tired of paying hundreds of millions of dollars for nothing.

The NHL is all about dumbing shit down for Americans. No chance they'll follow a complicated system where there are half points...

my thoughts exactly. Half point system would be confusing and unnecessary

3 pt system is probably the best (3pt regulation win, 2pt OT/SO win, 1 pt OT/SO loss).
3 points get distributed at the end of each game.
It's BS how some games can possibly hand out 3 pts and some only 2 with our current system.

And I like the shoot outs.
Every time the game remains tied after regulation,
I wait for the "5 min filler" to pass by and eagerly await for the shoot out to decide the outcome.

The shoot out really puts me on the edge of my seat every time.

Baseball and basketball always has those 17.5 games behind... never understood it, will never try to

double up the numbers then

That one is sorta easy, actually...it's basically the difference in wins/losses relative to the number of games played by each team.

Perfect! Get rid of the loser points

Vancouver Canucks officially name the Chicago Wolves as their AHL affiliate.

http://canucks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=567422