Sleeksays

Anaheim Ducks (10-8-2, 7th in west) at St. Louis Blues (6-8-2, 15th in west) Ducks had better have a better start or somebody's going to the dentist! So for Part IV of this series, I thought I'd take a look at some of the ways that Burke was a very good general manager -- things that worked for the Ducks not only on their Cup run but also looking forward. Think of these as a bit of a primer for good ol' Bob Murray, or more accurately, Part IV: What I like about Burke the roster-builder . Lesson One: If you want depth, don't acquire depth players; instead insert talent at the top of your roster. While I've stated before that I�m not overly impressed that Burke had the "wisdom" to acquire Niedermayer, Selanne, or Pronger, I don�t want to take away from the fact that Burke knew what he was going after � a superstar. His focus wasn�t on filling in his roster with supplementary depth players, though he certainly put those pieces in place as well; he was loo...

Time to take a break from my normally scheduled Burke Week -- tomorrow I'll get to the positive GM lessons we can learn from the Burke. Today instead I'm just going to toss a few links and call it a day (partially because I feel bad just tossing these at the end of a long post; mostly because I'm lazy) . First off, in keeping with Burke-themed tradition, I was a guest again on The Rink Podcast this week to talk about what the Burke departure means for Anaheim. I'm the first of three guests in a virtual All-Star Game of blog guests -- Steve Lepore of Puck the Media also talks about Versus ratings, and Alanah McGinley of Canucks and Beyond talks about Roberto Luongo's shutout streak. Not my strongest work, but then again, podcasting ain't my forte. Secondly, I wanted to give an update on the guy sometimes known as Kyle J and sometimes known as "the Swede" -- our mysterious comic book contributor here at BoC ( Episode 1: Toronto , Episode II: Detroit )...

Los Angeles Kings (7-7-2, t-11th in west) at Anaheim Ducks (9-7-2, 5th in west) That strange silence you're hearing is a quiet general manager. Over the next week, I will be writing a series of posts looking back on the legacy of Brian Burke in Anaheim -- moves I liked, moves I didn't like, plus some general observations -- so yeah, look forward to that. For now, though, all I'll say is that I'm fine with the timing of the move, as there's not a lot of GMing that can really be done with the rest this year's roster. The Ducks are so close to the cap ceiling that there's not much to do except (a) promote Bobby Ryan and (b) re-sign some key players before next summer. We'll get to (a) in a second, but really the re-signing aspect is the key one: once Burke turned down a contract extension, next year's roster became Bob Murray's concern, and better to put that person in charge now than to wait until the offseason. Incidentally, I don't expect ...

Poor Bobby Ryan. The kid picked one slot behind Sidney Crosby hasn't had much opportunity to shine on an NHL stage. He played in his first 25 NHL games last year , including 2 in the Dallas series, and after a strong camp this season, was demoted yesterday to the AHL Chops mainly for salary cap reasons . This is a situation that it's a bit tough to write about, because there's several unknowns at work here: (a) Bobby Ryan's bonus clauses -- thanks to NHL secrecy, I have no idea what Ryan would need to do in order to earn his $1.1 M in bonuses, though I'd guess they pertain to NHL-level achievements. If Ryan started on the Ducks, though, the $1.1 M would count against the cap as potential achievements, and I can't say at what point these bonuses become unachievable. (b) Bobby Ryan's potential -- I've liked what I've seen out of the kid in limited exposure thus far, but Ryan's played most of his hockey completely off my radar. I assume the kid is...