Darren Raddysh

But in terms of other than icing... um you know like like defensive zone starts are an extreme rarity for alexander ovechkin so now you have to coach a team with that in mind um and thinking about okay well we got to get him his power play time of course he's basically made the franchise value what it is you have this to respect that yet you're still trying to rebuild and you're still trying to win hockey games so i give washington a lot of credit for what they've been able to do they've continued to um inject youth into their into their program and you know i like what they've done moving forward you know i live in the toronto market i'm exposed to it all the time but the toronto maple leafs are better team.

Darren Radish in the back end, Bobrovsky in goal.

He'll be a really good mentor for Aktyomov.

Their young netminder was a big piece of a Calder Cup win for the Marlies last year in the American League.

And they know what they can work with.

You think Darren Radish turns into a 70-point player if he's not actually given a shot? Well, no.

They trust in their core, and then they let everyone have an opportunity to see what they really have.

How many years have we spent cheering for the Flames where they didn't call up any of their draft picks because they had all these veteran free agents in the way? And they can't move on from Troy Brower, even though we're going to move on from him in 20 games,

All right, let's get into the honorable mentions.

We've got Darren Radish, Mikhail Sergachev, Charlie McAvoy, Miro Hiskinin, and Jake Sanderson.

So this

makes it kind of like a top 15, right? We just highlighted five names.

We're obviously going to get into a top 10, but there's probably some names that we didn't list that are worth mentioning here.

But off the top of my head, seeing Jake Sanderson here, in my mind, I'm just like, Jake Sanderson, I feel like did enough last year to be a top 10 guy, right? There's 10 guys that are more valuable than him.

Darren Radish, what he did with Tampa last year was insane.

He was probably pickup of the league.

I shouldn't say more than anything else, because I wanna talk about goalie in a minute, and their goalie move probably will determine it more so.

They also add Darren Raddysh, and Tampa didn't wanna pay him.

He had just been the, the Lightning's number one defenseman for an entire season after a very odd career.

So we talked about him when we talked about Tampa, but Darren Raddysh, a 20...

Thir- 30, excuse me, a 30-year-old defenseman who had not made the NHL as a regular until he was 27 after years in the AHL.

He plays at 27, he plays at 28.

And I don't think we live in a world anymore where teams are scared to trade inside their own division.

Darren Raddysh goes from Tampa to the Leafs.

Brady Tkachuk goes from the Sens to Florida.

Like, Brad Marchand went from the Bruins to Flor- like, people don't care anymore about that.

I t- like, he's a manly man, and...

Like, yesterday there was a column in the Toronto Sun from Steve Simmons.

Steve Simmons had a long sit-down with, um, Toronto's new blue liner, Darren Raddysh.

Pretty good column, actually, if you wanna read it.

It was disappointing last year.

They're losing their top two power play producers, Darren Radish and Oliver Bjorkstrand.

It's hard to believe Bjorkstrand was second on the team in power play goals, but he was with nine.

Yeah.

He's come out and said he doesn't like doing it.

He likes playing off of the half wall on that right-hand side.

But with Radish no longer at that point and it may be an option to see that.

Uh, the big thing that they've been missing ever since Stamkos left is that big booming shot opposite of, um, Kucherov that kind of stretches the defense out.

And that's what they signed him for.

I don't think Darren Radish is the answer for eight years, but he's going to help them this season.

They better hope that he has the same season he had last year or better.

I don't know about that.