They’re built very well. I’m a big fan . Hoping Ottawa follows this model.

@csick the forward lines are filthy. I had to keep Neighbours, he might already be Berube's favorite player.

It looks very good. Now if you can upgrade LD , it would be a top contender

I honestly think Buffalo will not get a better deal than this from anyone. Frankly Im not sure STL should do this.

Hampus Lindholm, come on down

@csick how would you feel about an Eichel to OTT trade? Do you guys have too many center prospects?

Yeah I agree - it hurts the Blues a good bit, losing a few affordable guys just to add something that isn't 100% needed. Buffalo seemingly loses leverage every day, you gotta wonder what kind of package finally gets it done. Probably not better than this.

I’m hesitant to trade Pinto right now, he looks like a stud. I think we might even have our top 2 centres in Norris and Pinto. I’d prefer to trade for a right handed scoring RW.

Yeah that's what I thought! Pinto is a great player. I thought he possibly might've edged out Caufield for Hobey Baker but Caufield is incredible. Wish the Sharks still had Norris!

Pinto came in last year , had 7pts in 12 games and was playing the PK right from the get go and is great at faceoffs. The coach has him on a shutdown line with Paul and Brown this year but they’re actually the line that plays the most minutes. He’s so big and strong and a good skater too. I have 0 complaints about his game. He might even be better than Norris. These 2 fighting for the 1C is very comparable to Schenn vs ROR. 2 very good players

Yes, just imagine when both are matured and at the top of their games!

Buffalo almost certainly has to accept this. It would be awesome to have Jack, but at this price I wouldn't sleep well at night. I'd rather invest a smaller portion of this package (or a variation) to upgrade our D, especially on the left side.

Ideally :

Tkachuk-Norris-Batherson
Stutzle-Pinto-XXX
Formenton-White-Brown
Paul-Kelly-Watson

Chabot-XXX
Sanderson-Zub
Kleven-JBD/Thomson

Gustavsson
Murray/Sogard

This team has very strong depth right now and no room for everyone, Eichel at a PPG or higher is a big steal

Love it for Buffalo tbh. Essentially 3 firsts, a nice bottom 6 center option on a cheap deal, and Tarasenko who can showcase for a trade and sell high if he plays well with our top guns (Olofsson, Skinner, and Mitts)

Bring me Marcus Pettersson. Tall, speedy young defensive defenseman with term who is already one of the best in the league at suppressing high danger chances.

You already know what I'm going to say.

I'm not really sold on MP but he'd probably be pretty cheap to acquire and might be a fit.



I appreciate your self-control just seeing what it would look like, I think it's too steep all things considered

Hmm. That's certainly a bit of exaggeration, but the thing you're really overlooking is what a catastrophe he is getting out of the zone - about 14th percentile in success % over his career so far. That's Oleksiak territory, meaning in the long run he probably creates far more danger chances with his turnovers and bad passes than he suppresses. Any way you slice it, he's a 3rd pairing guy signed to a 4x4.

Final analysis: Diamond hard pass for me.

That's your opinion, and that's your right to it, but I don't think it's a very informed one.

First of all, it's not an exaggeration at all- from Dom Luszczyszyn's season preview of the Penguins this year on the Athletic: "Surprisingly he [Brian Dumoulin] wasn't the best on the team last season- that honor went to Marcus Pettersson, a sometimes maligned figure on the backend. He's better than many give him credit for and I'm not quite sure where the hate stems from. He's not a great puck-mover and isn't the most physical, but he puts up great defensive numbers. He consistently allows fewer chances relative to teammates which brings him to a consistent 53 percent (!) expected goals rate and an even higher actual goals rate. Last year, no one allowed fewer expected goals against than Pettersson". Evolving Hockey likes him too (not on the power play I guess, but why would anyone use him on the power play?).

I'm also not sure where you're seeing all these turnovers and bad passes. He was #305 among defensemen in giveaways since 2017-18, his first season in the league, far far behind the typical guys people throw up there as solutions for the Blues defense like Lindholm, Scandella, or Mayfield. His teams gets more shots with him on the ice than without him on the ice, something that's only improved as he's gotten older. So even if he is bad at breaking out of the zone, the Penguins are still have more possession than not when he's on the ice. I think your concern about this one stat is unwarranted. I wish you'd apply the same reasoning every time someone recommends trading Ivan Barbashev or Oskar Sundqvist. Diamond hard opinions isn't always the best approach to stuff.

As for the third pairing thing, you're right that he doesn't get a ton of ice time (17 minutes per game, which puts him at a low end second pair option) but like Vince Dunn (although in kind of an opposite way) I think he's a guy who could benefit from a bigger role. His play style and size is extremely similar to Jay Bouwmeester and I think that's the kind of guy Parayko could use again. I don't discount that it would be a risk but every move is a risk to some degree, and I think he's significantly less risky than someone like Lindholm who is older, has tons of pedigree, and is on an expiring deal. He's definitely not going to hurt you anymore than say, Marco Scandella does.

1- First of all, him saying Petterson gets "hate" is just being dramatic. And secondly, he kinda immediately answers his own overdramatic question. Petterson makes people nervous because he's a problem moving out of the zone. As we all saw last season, failing to get out of the zone causes a lot of trouble.

2- I'm seeing his zone exit stats in his zone exit stats. Adding someone from the 14th percentile at exiting the zone safely doesn't work for me. I mean, I did say it was a pass for me. I'm not trying to speak for the Blues or anyone else.

If you scroll through Pens twitter at all, or look at the comments on that review, you will see that the hate thing is not being dramatic at all. The fans don't like him. He was basically their Zach Sanford, another player who was good defensively that the fans hated. And again, if you look at it, it really has nothing to do with his lack of puck movement skills, it's almost entirely because he doesn't hit people. People think defensive defensemen should hit people. The very reason that Josh Yohe (Pens beat writer on the Athletic) said that Pettersson was available was because he "wouldn't beat too many NHL players in an arm-wrestling contest". Like, it's about that and pretty much nothing else. It's not Dom being overdramatic, it's acknowledging the very thing that penguins fans (the biggest group reading a preview of the Penguins) would jump down his throat for before making the case why Pettersson is good. It's good writing and it shows he has a pulse on the fanbase.

Dom also knowledges that he's not the best puck mover and I'll admit that's true as well (again though, it's not why people don't like him, but it's a true drawback of his game). But every defensemen on this team doesn't have to be Torey Krug. We have tons of puck moving options- Faulk, Parayko, and Krug all made their name as puck moving defensemen. Walman plays a similar game, Perunovich is coming up soon. That doesn't mean every defenseman is useless because he doesn't move the puck extremely well. You need someone whose primary strength is stopping pucks from getting to your goalie. Hjalmarsson wasn't a good puck mover, nor is Micael Kempny nor was Jay Bouwmeester at 35 but they all played critical shutdown roles on cup winning teams. It's good to have a diversity of skills in your defense core.

And again, looking at one stat and determining whether that makes a player good or not is not a complete analysis of a player. And I understand that you are speaking "for yourself", but like we're talking about bringing him to the Blues and we are both Blues fans so...okay? We're clearly talking about what we think would be best "for the Blues" so I'm not sure what you're trying to say by saying "I speak for myself". This is all just opinions and I said as much in my first response that you can have this opinion, just as I can.

1- I don't bother with Twitter, so I'll just take your word for it.

2- Just FYI, J-Bo was 56th percentile in zone exit % the Cup year. That's more than adequate for what he brought next to Parayko. And I never said they all had to be puck carrying wizards, but when a guy is below a certain level, it's a problem.

3- I didn't say it was the only factor I weighed. And it's not just a weakness, it's a 14th percentile sized weakness. It's perfectly fair to feel that this one thing, which is very important to our system, needs to be above a certain level, especially for a guy signed to 4x4 to very possibly end up as a 3D. There are better, more suitable LDs on better contracts we could go after if necessary.