Ongoing 2025 - 2026 season thread

[DavidGee24]

My question. Why hasn't Beniers turned into a superstar after his amazing rookie season. He looks to me like he isn't anything all that special. We really need a star, and he isn't it.

He wasn't a big scorer in college either and that concerned me. Supposedly he was this great two-way guy but he's not a scorer. He doesn't put the puck in the goal or set up others to do so, and he gets a lot of minutes to not do either.

Three top-rated young forwards drafted in 2021 - 2024:

2021
Matty Beniers (23) 13 games, 8 points, last season 43 points
Mason McTavish (22) 12 games, 9 points, last season 52 points
William Eklund (23) 12 games, 11 points, last season 58 points

2022
Shane Wright (21) 13 games, 7 points, last season 44 points
Logan Cooley (21) 14 games, 12 points, last season 65 points
Juraj Slafkovsky (21) 13 games, 8 points, last season 51 points

2023
Conor Bedard (20) 14 games, 18 points, last season 67 points
Leo Carlsson (20) 12 games, 18 points, last season 45 points
Will Smith (20) 14 games, 13 points, last season 45 points

2024
Macklin Celebrini (19) 14 games, 21 points, last season 63 points
Bennett Sennecke (19) 12 games, 7 points, rookie
Ivan Demidov (19) 13 games, 12 points, rookie

Beniers is the oldest of the top twelve and the other ten are better scorers than him and Wright. How the hell does this happen.

[XpertDBA]

It happens because our front office sucks balls. They are horrible at evaluating talent.

But make sure to give a woman a coaching position on the NHL team, because, yeah....that's important. Can you say DEI ?

[Sibelius Hindemith]

C'mon now, some things matter more than winning hockey games. Maybe you should be grateful that you've got a hockey team at all. And on top of that they're saving the planet by playing in an arena that is powered by gaseous emissions from all the wonderful people that run the team.

[DavidGee24]

It happens because our front office sucks balls. They are horrible at evaluating talent.

But make sure to give a woman a coaching position on the NHL team, because, yeah....that's important. Can you say DEI ?

Part of it is luck, obviously the Kraken would have had to have the #1 selection to get Bedard or Celebrini, but to end up with those two along with the bad contracts they've saddled themselves with.

Speaking of Wright, nice OT goal to beat the Blahs after Stephenson took a brief vacation from being a bum to tie it with 0.5 seconds left.

[DavidGee24]

C'mon now, some things matter more than winning hockey games. Maybe you should be grateful that you've got a hockey team at all. And on top of that they're saving the planet by playing in an arena that is powered by gaseous emissions from all the wonderful people that run the team.

My wife and I did the arena tour two summers ago. Even though we got our own private tour and the arena is light-years better than the Honda Center in Anaheim that I drive past every weekday, our guide talked WAY too much about the woke aspects of the arena. I was oh-so-close to asking if the Storm's tampon dispensers issued recycled tampons.

[DavidGee24]

Just when it looks like this team is going to start losing a bunch of boring 2-1 and 3-1 games, they light up best goalie in the world Hellebuyck for four goals on only 17 shots and beat last season's top regular season team for the second straight time.

The only team in the division with a winning record is the Sucks at 11-6. Gotta take advantage of that.