Bits: Preserve 1975; Hamonic's Memorial Cup begins; Hillen the holder

• Should be not will be

Not before “bust,” certainly, although I wouldn’t cry if he joined the effort. I’m just pining for the home run upgrade (I’m not as certain about Michalek as about Volchenkov, but…).

I think that’s still a viable option if you have a guy in mind that you can get later (like Josh Bailey), but then you risk having him snatched. I think that the only way the Isles move off of five is if they have four guys they really love and can’t move up for any of them, and they all get taken. Then they could swing a deal with a team that desperately wants someone that’s about to come off the board.

In this case, the Isles have no shot really at Hall or Seguin, so it’s Connolly, Gudbranson, and Fowler. (Or perhaps Gormley, but I have doubts.) In a way they’re where Colorado was last year with the third pick, waiting to get whomever was left over from the Tavheduch Watch. Unless they really really think that there’s a Big Four and everyone else is much of a muchness, I think they’ll stay and grab the guy they like best. (I’d really like to see Gudbranson there.)

Certainly not a healthy addition to Gordon’s resume. Certainly a dirt roster.

I was thinking the other day about how much I’d read into their three-game, zero-prep, end-of-season crash, when I remembered what I concluded about John Tavares popping in goals for Canada at the same tournament: Not much to go on.

(Mind you, if Tavares scores the gold-winning goal or something, then I’ll jump back on the ol’ “Kid’s a natural winner!!!!1” wagon.)

Well, although I like watching the tournament and reporting a bit here, I’d definitely not draw too many conclusions concerning the potential or the improvement of certain NHLers. It’s just fun to watch and interesting indeed to see the guys wear different jerseys, play with different line mates or just to see whether they’re having a good time. But the hockey really is totally different. The skating is more important on the bigger rink obviously, the angles are different and certain things just don’t work that well. Overall, the US definitely didn’t adjust well enough to the game on the bigger rink, but if that was mainly because of the mediocre roster or because of the coaching or whatever, I don’t know. In case you haven’t seen it, I wrote something about Gordon in the comments of my fanpost, but that there is really as far as I’d take it.

Okposo’s performance, well, he was one of their best players. If that’s enough on this weak team to meet the expectations, I don’t know, but he really had a quite good game against Denmark and some impact in the 3rd period against Germany, the best period of the US team. The game against Finland was a bit disappointing, though. He finally was paired with Oshie (and Dubinsky), after Foligno had clearly held them back in the first couple of games, but then didn’t play very well. He sometimes looked a bit lazy on the backcheck, but also there, not as much as many other guys on this team. It was unbelieveable how many rushes their opponents got. But again, no idea if the coaching was bad there or the lines just didn’t work or the players just didn’t realize how well the opposition would move the puck up the ice in transition. However, I think, a big part was again the adjustment to the bigger rink. They noticed dumps to the corners and cycles weren’t very effective, tried to do something else or actually didn’t know what to do, turned the puck over, weren’t close enough together as a 5-man unit and gave up all the rushes. And Okposo had his share, but definitely wasn’t the element pulling them down.

The same goes for Hillen. Actually, he was one of those who realized best what could work and what needs to be done. His game helps quite a bit of course, as he likes to move the puck up the ice and on the bigger rink you mostly have some room to do that. And he did it very nicely a few times indeed, particularly against Denmark and Finland after he had been a bit shaky in the first game. But he for example was way better than Andy Greene, who I rate very high in the NHL. And he was pretty good defensively, too, didn’t run around as much as others did. He finally got a slightly bigger role in the 3rd game and I hope he’ll get more of that in the relegation round.

I think that’s what I’d want. Even contract-wise, that seems to match up best as a long-term successor emerges. He has a different background and road to the league than most of the others, so maybe that’s a small barrier in the whole “leaders of men” department. But man, he captains his intl squad and he’s been through Montreal hell to get to this point, you’d think he’d have the respect of that room.

What a collapse, times two.

I was worried — the Flyers handed them two cheap powerplays and they scored on both of them, so it wasn’t like the B’s “took it to ’em” in the first. Beyond that convenient boost, the B’s played a fairly uninspiring game, so how it played out was not shocking, particularly after that fluke goal made it 3-1 before the break.