Off topic but MTL absolutely does not have the best 3rd pairing in the league. That title belongs to Carolina

In no order......Alzner, Ryan, Pomerville . I still say Weber due to his term.
Dubinski, Ladd (term), Shattenkirk, Stall. Giradi's 3.6m buyout , Callaghan,
Little (term ) Seabrook (term) Lucic, Ericsson, Perry, Spezza, Parise. Suter (term if slows down in a few years)

Go ahead and look at those advanced stats, Benn + Ouellet have some of the best #s in the entire league compared to every pairing in the NHL

Parise and Weber. The term makes me want to die

do you mean for the 18-19 season? cause thats a pretty small sample size... only 4 games (i cant find advanced stats with the 5th game included so this will have to do). (from hockey-reference.com)

They average a even strength CF% of 64.4%, which is great... but they also have a 69.1% Offensive zone start percentage which boosts their stats. not to mention neither of them have been on the ice for a goal for this season and their average even strength PDO is 91.7 which is pretty bad.

over their careers they have an ES CF% of 51% and average ES PDO of 99.6 with an average ES offensive zone start percentage of 50.5%. those arent bad stats for their careers but they arent great either. considering the most points they've scored in a season is 19 and 13, and the fact that they arent spectacular defensively, this definitely does not qualify them to be considered the best 3rd pair in the league.

I totally forgot about the Lead contract. Just terrible for the rebuilding NYI. Garth Snow really left that organization in a tough spot before he was fired. The Alzner deal has definitely been overshadowed by some of the other terrible moves made by Bergevin over the past couple years. Maybe he should've used that money to re-sign Radulov to an extension.

this is a joke LMAO. advanced stats don't mean everything. how could you say something so crazy???

dont take him seriously with comments like that. and yes I agree Carolina does

HAHAHA! Detroit just bought out the final year of Xavier Ouellet's contract. And last I checked, DET's Defense is among the worst in the league.

Exactly, he’s definitely trolling. No person ACTUALLY believes oulette-Benn is a good bottom pairing let alone the best in the leauge

Well tbf they bought him out so he could sign to close to home to be with his sick mom iirc

We are just saying there’s no way that’s the best bottom pairing in the leauge. If Oulette was THAT good they would’ve traded him rather than buying him out

Maybe it's because of the coaching and not the skill? Looks at Montreal's playstyle. Our roster is 2x worse than last year, yet we are outplaying every team everynight. Toronto did the same thing 3 years ago. Coaching makes a difference

Ottawa fan here... and yes Ryan's contract is a top 10 killer man.

He's a 5m player earning 7.25

His 2 way game he showed in the 2017 Playoffs was fantastic, and could be argued he was worth it, I mean he was a great 2 way player in those playoffs, but He's been a 20 goal/30 assist guy from day 1 in OTT

And for the money. Not good enough.

For 7m per... he should be hitting 30 goals. Period.

I don't know what Gary Bettman has done to deserve his 20 year reign and his 20m salary.

Bettman has grown the league. Overall he's done an alright job.

I know the 1 missed season and the 2 partial seasons have a sour taste, but overall he's done a good job.

The NHL is pushing the NBA for 3rd

Coaching makes the difference between making the playoffs by a few points or missing by a few points. Detroit could have Scotty Bowman at his peak and they'd still be a bottom 5 team in the league.

I thought the same about Montreal, but I was wrong when we went with our fast pace style

MTL is still a long ways away from the playoffs. I still believe they're the 5th best team in the Atlantic Division at best and there are probably 6 teams ahead of them in the Metro, as well. They've looked solid so far, but they're still very weak down the middle and on defense. It's only a matter of time before these deficiencies are exposed for what they are.

I'll quote this in a month and we can see just how accurate your statement is.

In a month? how are you going to evaluate if MTL is a playoff team in November?

Excellent point. However, we could know if MTL is NOT a playoff team by thanksgiving. If they're under "NHL.500" by late November the odds are definitely stacked against them making the playoffs.

If they're still top 3 in the Atlantic by then I'll buy drinks for everyone.

In a month, it will be more than a "Small Sample Size", if they are still battling for 1st in the division, we will know they are legit.

or you could wait until the regular season ends to see if they make it...

STL was 2nd in the league (1st in their division by 4 points) on Nov 21 last year and ended up missing the playoffs. Florida was 29th in the league (7th in their division) on Nov 21 last year and only missed the playoffs by 1 point.

November standings wont tell you which teams are legit