That’s not true. Reaves is a decent 4th liner in terms of offensive production, but he’s paid what he’s paid because he can throw hits. Whether you think that he’s worth his contract or not is a different topic. Unlike fighting, physicality can be valuable in the NHL. Reaves was involved in 3 fights last year. If Vegas was paying him to fight, then he isn’t doing a very good job of it. However his league leading 316 hits were what Vegas was hoping for.

Haley however, isn’t nearly as good offensively, and is paid to fight. He had 1 more fight in 30% of the games that Reaves played.

And considering Haley only played 22 games last year, it seems that enforcers are fortunately a dying breed in the NHL.

I don’t know what the problem is. If you like hitting, that is very much still relevant and valued in the NHL. However, just going onto the ice just to punch each other’s faces isn’t useful to winning, or something that should be celebrated. There’s nothing wrong with a player dropping the gloves to stick up for them self or a teammate, but it makes no sense for people to fight for no reason, especially when they’re taking up a roster spot from half-decent players.

And if anyone doesn’t want to watch hockey because of a lack of fighting, then I don’t understand why they were ever watching hockey in the first place. The sport they would be looking for is boxing.

nhl fans have a serious machoism problem.

They need to sell tickets?

What does selling tickets have to do with signing a 4th line bender? Guess hitting and fighting sells tickets I guess

Your rhetoric doesn't cut it.

Haley either plays in the AHL, sits in the pressbox, or blocks a prospect or actual NHL calibre player. Ottawa has grit, and their grit can actually play at the NHL level. My rhetoric cancels your rhetoric.

It does. What does the crowd do everytime there's a fight? Stand up with excitement. Now more than ever teams will struggle selling tickets when they are allowed to have fans. A lot of people are still freaked out with Covid I suppose.

Also there's 2 pros to this signing. He can stay in the NHL and play against other slow/physical teams and protect the young NHLers as well as create some excitement for the fans or he can play in the AHL and protect the young players there.

A lot of lashing out here, lol. I suppose he'd have been better off signing this deal on a busier day. That way we'd be talking out more impactful players. OTT has had a pretty great last couple months, so I guess it's only natural that we have to freak out over one move. Don't most teams have a guy like this in their system for one reason or another?

Are you sure that Ottawa has had a great last couple months?

They’ve traded a 2nd & a prospect for a below average goalie, who they proceed to pay a ridiculous $6.25 million per year. They make the team worse by signing Haley/Galchenyuk and trading for Watson/Gudbranson.

Plus they let a fan favourite and great leader on the team in Mark Borowiecki only to replace him with Gudbranson, who costs twice as much, and they needed to trade a 5th to get him.

I’d say the only good things that they’ve done, other than drafting players and resigning people (which is expected), is signing Dadonov and maybe trading for Josh Brown.

I definitely agree w/ you on Murray. I think he's ridiculously overrated. But the two top-5 picks overshadow the other mistakes, imo. They needed to get to the cap floor and by the time they're good enough to compete for the playoffs (3-4 years) they'll be free from most of these overpaid contracts, as well as their buyouts. I think the Sens are in a much much better position now than they were 4 months ago. But, they're still terrible and have a long way to go.

They shouldn't. They're useless. Get you a guy that can fight but also play hockey. Haley, Rinaldo, Sabourin aren't NHLers. They just hit and fight, that's not NHL hockey anymore.

I know you're right. But I cant help but think some teams benefit if the guy is an inspirational type player. I remember Cam Janssen from the Devils about 8-10 years ago. Everyone loved him and he was relentless, but never scored. Marty used to have a contest w/ him for most points in a season. Marty usually won, lol. But, these days you probably need 12 Forwards that can provide at least some offense in order to be successful, especially in the postseason.