Jump to content

JR Ewing

Global Moderator
  • Posts

    4,447
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    48

Everything posted by JR Ewing

  1. Arizona? The league has bent over backwards to keep that sorry franchise where they are, to the extent that they're now playing in a tiny college arena where the fans of opposing teams outnumber people cheering for the Coyotes. The team is almost literally just a dumping grounds for LTIR contracts.
  2. The term is nearly laughably over-used now. Generational talents are the sorts of players who start racking up numbers that nobody has seen in (gasp!) a generation or more. They're the sorts of players who pile up multiple Art Ross, Hart, Lindsays, etc. Patrick Kane has won a Hart, Lindsay and Art Ross and was, as you point out, a sub-par defensive player. Great player who had a great year, but it doesn't add up to Crosby, who has two Art Ross, two Harts and three Lindsays. It's light years away from McDavid who has five Art Ross, four Lindays and three Harts in only eight years. Patrick Kane is a slam-dunk, first ballot of Hall of Famer. Not generational, though.
  3. If anything, the Oilers winning the lottery in 2015 is evidence that the league doesn't rig the draft. There's no way they were hoping that Connor McDavid would land in the laps of a historically inept management team that plays its games in the most out-of-the-way market they could find. If they had their choice, McDavid would be a Ranger or Blackhawk right now.
  4. Frost has average NHL size for a centre, but I do take your point. A player can be small and effective, but small teams are easier to neutralize and you can't teach size...
  5. Agreed. I think that drafting best player available is damned near always the way to go, with exceptions for things like prioritizing centres over wingers or players who are almost a year younger than the rest of the group. Drafting for current need is risky business. Players take time to develop, and your needs may be very different by the time they're ready, and that's if they even make it that far anyway. I don't know who of those three will end up the better player, but I wouldn't let Catton being relatively thin dissuade me if I was pretty sure that he was the best bet.
  6. No, I'm sorry. He's well past his expiration date and providing sub-replacement level play at both ends of the ice, especially his own.
  7. Yup. Three more of my fairly meaningless rules: -Drafting Coke machines (huge, unskilled players) in anything other than the late rounds is a recipe for disaster. -Using early picks based on a player's supposed character, without scoring numbers to back it up, is a bad idea. -Drafting defensive specialists is usually bound to blow up in your face.
  8. Even if you do everything right, you could come up against a team with a payroll approaching $100M in a league with a salary cap of $85M and get to listen to the analysts wax poetic about that team's incredible depth.
  9. Tanking can assure you of getting high quality picks, but a lot of things have to line up properly for it all to work. You need to do it when the right player comes along. The term "generational talent" gets thrown around a lot these days. Sometimes it's used correctly, like with Crosby and McDavid and sometimes it doesn't, like with Bedard. You can still build around a player like Bedard, but I'm not entirely convinced that you should strip your organization completely of talent to get a player who falls short of that truly rare gift. The textbook example of this are the Oilers. In their case, they tried it with Taylor Hall, and he just wasn't the guy to empty to the cupboard for. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is a very good hockey player, but his draft wasn't the deepest. Nail Yakupov was a disaster. Not all 1st overall picks, not even consensus #1s, are that guy. It's one thing to shred talent, but it's another to build it back up. Sure, you can stockpile draft picks, but those picks need to be the right players with the right mix of qualities and at the right positions. You need the right people in player development. You need the right people in the AHL. You need an owner who keeps his nose out of hockey ops. You can't make mistakes there, or you wander in the wilderness. You can't have bad luck. In 2019, the Oilers had Andrej Sekera carved out of their rebuild, due to an Achilles injury which ended his NHL career. The next season, Oscar Klefbom was forced to retire due to arthritis issues at only 26. Adam Larsson signed in Seattle the next off-season, because he couldn't bear to play hockey in the building next to the place where his father died. Total rebuilds can work, but a lot factors (many of which are completely beyond your control) have to swing in your favour in order for it to go right.
  10. Agreed. Kelly McCrimmon is the smartest, craftiest, most creative and devious General Manager currently at work in the NHL, and he had a strong deadline.
  11. EJ is a replacement-level player now: He costs $3.3M but is providing $800K in value.
  12. Here's why I can't help but be a little cynical about Stone being put on LTIR: Man, it is so lucky that Stone's back always gives up the ghost just before the trade deadline, so the team can add a bunch of salary to their roster. How convenient.
  13. What's been galling is to see a guy the size of Matthews basically disappear when things get physical. Steve Stamkos, outweighed by 20 lbs, bullied Matthews a couple of playoffs ago.
  14. I'm sure that surreptitiously planted microphone would have picked up a lot of "he plays Flyers hockey!" sorts of things being said when they were talking about re-signing Seeler. I agree; it's not a crippling signing. I just think it doesn't serve to move the needle for the team in any way, shape or form. For anybody worried that Seeler will be blocking a young defenseman: if that young defenseman can't move past the 3rd pairing guy who spends too much time defending, you have bigger problems to worry about.
  15. The Edmonton media and more than a few fans used to prostrate themselves by waxing poetic about the shotblocking of Kris Russell. I don't want to be misunderstood, because it's a good thing to block a shot. It's also true that if you're always blocking a lot of shots, the other team just has the puck too damned much. Those guys usually have a pretty rough transition into their 30s, as that sort of game really takes it toll on your body.
  16. I'm glad the Oilers were able to grab a multi-dimensional player. I’d have been disappointed with a pure scorer like Mantha where you have a vacuum if he’s not scoring, and that 20%+ shooting percentage won't go on forever. High calories, low nutrition. -Henrique: can play centre, PK, play on a skill line, play in a depth role, etc. He doesn't have the quickest boots, but he’s high IQ and pairing him with a fast train like Ryan McLeod should make him effective. -Carrick: upgrade over Derek Ryan on the 4th line. Ryan is smart, but old, small and slow, and struggles with assignments due to the physics of the NHL.
  17. I know that he legitimately has a bad back, and that can really impact a person's life. Hope he's alright.
  18. Stone's back will be good to go the day after the regular season ends.
  19. The Vancouver Canucks began their rebuild at the entry draft of 2017 after finishing 2nd-last in the NHL, and it was Elias Pettersson who was the centrepiece of that rebuild. After six painful seasons spent mostly losing, while putting other pieces around Pettersson, they now find themselves themselves 1st in their division and have been in and out of 1st place overall throughout the year. I think that trading the centrepiece of that rebuild, right when you're in a position to contend is, to put it as politely as possible, silly. I'll lean on the opinions of two great hockey men: Sam Pollock said that the winner of a trade is the team that gets the best player. The Canucks would be instant losers in this scenario. Al Arbour said that the secret to building a winner is "no secret; it's not complicated - get good players" and keeping them is a part of that equation that we can't ignore.
  20. Right; but what was Allvin supposed to do here? This is what I always want to know from people who think the dollars and term are unconscionable. Do you think it would have been better if he engaged in 100% cutthroat negotiations, risking the creation of a hostile situation between himself and an important part of his team's core? Relationships between player and team have been broken that way, and the Vancouver Canucks aren't better off with Elias Pettersson playing hockey somewhere else. Should he have signed Pettersson to a bridge contract, which would make him a UFA at the end of the deal, making him even more expensive in three years? That's what happened with Darnell Nurse, who was bridged two times, creating his dreadful contract for the Oilers today. I guess I just always wonder what people expect to happen in these things. It's one for Panthers to sign guys to lower-than-expected dollars in contracts, but with no state tax and the price of an average detached home going for what Pettersson can buy a 1-bedroom condo for in Vancouver, there are other considerations at play.
  21. At current production, I think he's ever-so-slightly overpaid, but the contract is in the range. If he improves at all, and he's only 25, he'll be fair value. For the people who always freak out about the signing of core players to these contracts, I want to know what it is they think the GMs should do? Bridge them and pay even more? Grind them to death, extract every nickel and create animosity? Much the same as with the William Nylander contract, the Leafs issue is Tavare's age/AAV, not the young player in his prime.
  22. I wish I could give more than one upvote. Gambling is a mug's game and every bet is one against the house.
  23. I mean that the Flyers were able to say "Hey, we wanted them long term, but we found that they just party too darned much". Not saying I approve, but that if other free agents ask them why they should sign a deal after Richards/Carter, the team could say "Keep your nose clean and you're fine". That is, unless I'm remembering this incorrectly. My memory is that the team wanted them gone and that the prevailing wisdom said it was because of drugs and partying.
×
×
  • Create New...