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No need for a lot of preamble here: Most teams are prepping for the playoffs, which start in just three days, and almost as many are prepping for another fruitless summer.
I'm ready to run through a damn brick wall for this one. Let's go:
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Sam asks: "Which potential playoff miss would be more disappointing at this point, Columbus or Carolina?"
Columbus for sure. They have fewer points so it would be a less shocking way to blow it — they're tied with Montreal right now with two games each remaining — but to invest as much as they did in this postseason appearance and miss would be brutal because of what they're likely to lose this summer. Jobs on the line and all that.
Carolina made a huge rebound from a bad start and they've looked legitimately good for quite a while now, so to see it come down to these last few games and then maybe miss would be disappointing. But at least they could say, "Well we didn't make any big additions and once we got a legit goaltending situation a month into the season, we were fine." But they didn't trade an entire draft to get crushed by Tampa as a best-case scenario.
Brendan asks: "With the Jets and Preds being not very good, the Blues being the Blues, and the Sharks having Martin Jones as their goalie, who do you see coming out of the West between Vegas and the Flames?"
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I would push back on a couple of those assertions but for the most part, yeah, it's Golden Knights and Flames as the two favorites to come out of the West. And honestly, I think I've said it before, but for me it would be a huge disappointment for Vegas to not win the Conference Final. You mentioned Martin Jones, but the Flames have Dave Rittich, who's flattened out hard since the start of the season, and Mike Smith, who's been decent lately but is also Mike Smith.
Vegas is likely to lose at least one or two Big Contributors from the last two years this summer so getting somewhere with this group is a must. And man it's weird to talk about an expansion team making the Cup Final in their first two years, but that seems like the most likely scenario from where I sit.
Kevin asks: "Which RFA would you offer sheet if you were a GM?"
Cody Ceci .. just kidding.
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Point, Aho, or Marner. Pretty easy there. Apart from Aho you might be able to put a real good team in a real bad cap situation if it works. Carolina has some flexibility with re-signing their guy.
But if you're looking for maybe a little bit of value, might I suggest a Colin White , Alex Kerfoot, or Zach Werenski ? Man, there are a ton of really good RFAs this year. Charlie McAvoy , Jacob Trouba , Bill Karlsson, Brock Boeser , Patrik Laine , etc. Damn.
Carolina shouldn't have a problem keeping Sebastian Aho. (Getty)
Samuel asks via email: "If you re-draft the 2017 draft, what's the top five? Looks like Heiskanen, Pettersson, Brannstrom, and Makar are all better than Hischier and Patrick.
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Yeah honestly your order looks pretty much correct. Maybe you throw Henri Jokiharju in the mix ahead of Patrick as well, maybe Robert Thomas. I dunno. But definitely, yes, neither of Hischier or Patrick would be in my top three. Not the best time at the draft that year.
Phil asks: "Now that some time has passed, how would you revise your trade deadline winners/losers takes?"
I think everyone outside the Penguins front office missed on Gudbranson being a good add, but he definitely has been.
The Bruins obviously got less out of Charlie Coyle than I thought they would (and even then, I wasn't expecting big things). But Minnesota's acquisition of Ryan Donato was a futures move, clearly, that did not help them get into the playoffs and I figured that would have been the case.
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Still don't think the Columbus trades worked out particularly well for them if it really only gained them like half a point in the standings to this point. Not at that price, anyway.
Kevin Hayes hasn't moved the needle for Winnipeg at all, but that's not his fault.
Neither of Nashville's big acquisitions (Granlund and Simmonds) have helped them much either. Simmonds I figured, but thought Granlund could give them something.
I think those were the big ones I got wrong-ish. Maybe there's one or two I'm missing.
Brandon asks: "If you were rigging the lottery, who would you give the first three picks to?"
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The Rangers No. 1 overall, Kings No. 2, Chicago No. 3. Three biggest markets. Very easy question. Send me more like this because of how easy it was.
Mike asks: "Are guys like McDavid and Tavares (with the Islanders), who are their teams' best player but not very emotional, the best choices as captain? Is rah-rah in the clubhouse more important than leader on the ice, or is captain just a ceremonial thing basically meaningless in the big picture?"
I don't think it matters a lot, honestly. Like, it's on the GM to put guys in the room who are a steady presence and guys who are gonna throw a Gatorade jug if you lose to Edmonton on a Tuesday in February. As long as you have someone who's gonna say F words in the room and someone who's gonna lead by example, that's fine.
Plus, I really doubt that what we see publicly from guys like McDavid or Tavares are how it goes with The Boys and all that. But whatever, I'm sure every true hockey man thinks McDavid and Tavares missed all those postseasons because they didn't get a misconduct for calling a questionable penalty BS after they were already eight points back of the playoffs in December.
Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here .
Some questions in the mailbag are edited for clarity or to remove swear words, which are illegal to use.
