Sheahan and Sproul moved out

[yave1964]

To make room under the cap for Andreas Athanasiou  the Wings have traded Riley 'big Irish' Sheahan and a 5th rounder to the Penguins for winger Scott Wilson and a 3rd.

 

  The big part of the deal was cap space, Wilson only counts 625k against the cap while Sheahan is a bit over two million the difference being Athanasiou's salary which allows the Wings to put Wilson on the 4th line and AA on the 3rd line and stay under the cap.

 

  Wilson scored 8 goals and 26 points as a bottom six winger for the Pens who desperately needed a third line center to replace Nick Bonino who left for Nashville as an UFA in the offseason. Sheahan fits the bill nicely for them. Sheahan has always looked the part but it hasnt translated onto the ice, he has zero points in 8 games so far, he was oh for the season last year until he scored 2 goals in the seasons last game. 

  The other trade was Ryan Sproul who was playing for the Griffins but was getting squeezed by some talented kids, he was sent to Hartford (Rangers) for Matt Puempel, a former first round pick who has settled in as an AHL player who gets the occasional game at the NHL level, he played 27 games last year for the Rangers all together he has 79 games in the NHL, about a seasons worth with 10 goals and 5 assists. Personally I feel that Sproul never quite got a fair shake, he was injured while filling in for Ericsson last year and was pushed aside.

  Some quotes by Holland:

“His opportunity was last year in February and March when Jonathan Ericsson got hurt, and then Ryan went down with n ACL,” Holland said. “n the meantime Nick Jensen played real good. Puempel gives us depth, hopefully he can score a goal or two in Grand Rapids.” 

“We wanted to get an NHL player who can help us compete now. Scott Wilson has been in the NHL, he scored eight goals last year. Our scouts like him. “We like Sheahan, but he is going to go to Pittsburgh and get an opportunity to be a third- or fourth-line center."

  This allows the Wings to recall Saarjarvi from Toledo back to Grand Rapids where he belongs on the crowded back end, it fixes the organization depth problems a bit, Robbie Russo, a real favorite of mine is rumored to be next to go so that Saarjarvi and Hronek can play 20 minutes a night at the AHL level and get the needed experience and so that little feisty ball of hate Joe Hicketts can continue to get 23 minutes a night to see if he can continue to punch above his weight class. Peumpel is organizational depth and will probably get a recall at some point. Wilson is a defensive responsible winger who played 20 games in the postseason for the Pens on their way to the cup with 3 goals and 6 points even in the postseason, a bit too small to be a checker and not big enough to be in the top six, a tweener but any way you look at it he is one hell of a lot better than David freaking Booth or Witkowski.

  All three teams filled organizational needs. 

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964

 

Did you just use “Holland” and “trade” in the same sentence?

 

;-P

[WingNut722]

On 10/21/2017 at 7:55 PM, SpikeDDS said:

@yave1964

 

Did you just use “Holland” and “trade” in the same sentence?

 

;-P

 

It's a little shocking, I know.  But that's only half of it.  After lass night's loss to the Canucks, Jeff Blashill actually had bad things to say about his team.  Real bad.  Almost like he was angry at them.  

 

This is just weird....

[SpikeDDS]

25 minutes ago, WingNut722 said:

 

It's a little shocking, I know.  But that's only half of it.  After lass night's loss to the Canucks, Jeff Blashill actually had bad things to say about his team.  Real bad.  Almost like he was angry at them.  

 

This is just weird....

And they deserved every word of that!

 

Here's another one: PATHETIC!

 

Howard didn't look that good, but I don't think Carey Price would have looked good yesterday either. NO ONE looked good to me!

 

Time to crack some skulls! This is where Z must lead by example and not with his mouth. Blash did the mouth thing.

 

It's about dang time that "not good enough" didn't encompass their assessment of a game. That phrase is SOOOOO overused in our franchise, even back to the Babcock years. Time to retire it.

 

And it is apropos that trades have just happened. It should be explained that if you aren't going to play Red Wing hockey, we will send you to play your kind of hockey somewhere else and bring someone else in who WILL play Red Wing hockey.

 

And for goodness sakes, let's start doing that before we forget what Red Wing hockey actually looks like!

[yave1964]

@SpikeDDS @WingNut722

 

Did the Wings play last night? I thought they had the night off. Apparently so did they.

 

All seriousness, they were up with two minutes to go against Washington, I was thinking 'okay, 5-3 a gimme game against Vancouver so we are staring down a 6-3 start. Not too shabby.' Then the wheels fell off against Washington and I do not have the words to describe the effort last night. Any fans who were there should simply get their money back as the team did not show up.

 

  So we are what we thought we were, a mediocre at best team in a bad division who if everything breaks right we might stumble or bumble into a playoff spot but then what? Toronto and Tampa are the cream, the rest are like us, flawed so I guess anything is still possible. I don't see much on the farm except Svechnikov who might help the offense but who is raw and a bunch of B level small but fast defensemen who have varying skill levels most of whom are in their first year in the AHL so they are no help so we gotta play the cards we have.

 

  When Scotty Bowman got his first coaching gig with the expansion Blues the players were upset over ice time and line combo;s he held a quick meeting and said, "Most of you would like to figure out a new way to shuffle the deck, but gentleman, there are only so many ways you can shuffle twos and threes." end of meeting. That pretty much sums up these guys right now.

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964 @WingNut722

 

The difficult part of assessing hockey teams is that they all (with few exceptions) have stretches where they compete well. And compete level can mask a lack of talent. For a while. Desire and competition and drive DO sometimes win hockey games.

 

But the talent level shows itself over time. Talent can win when the effort isn’t top-notch. Once upon a time, we could count on our talent to save us, and for many years we did, even as our talent began to decline. Nick was back there to bail us out. I don’t think our team still remembers how to bring it every night anymore. 

 

And the talent difference between a mediocre team and a bad team is smaller than it used to be. That difference shows itself over dozens (plural) of games. Effort can overcome that small difference on most nights, but it has to be there to do it. Effort doesn’t come without effort. (Duh!)

 

Having had a wealth of talent for so many years, I wonder if we even know how to create a hockey environment where compete level is the only thing that matters. We NEED that to be true. Forget wins and losses for now. It is difficult to do that when wins are the easy measure of success. But for teams that lack the talent to make them realistic contenders, a culture of competitiveness and fight is what must be created and maintained. THAT is what we should be looking for from this team.

 

I don’t care right now whether we win or not. I mean I do—of course I do—but not as much as I want to see the entire team working hard. All the time. Every game. Even when we lose. Just give me 60 minutes of effort, and I promise it will not be “not good enough.” If we play good enough to win but don’t because their talent wins out, THIS season, we need to learn to be happy with that. 

 

If last year’s 6-2 start on our way to the basement didn’t teach you anything, it should have. Don’t forget it. It’s an 82 game season, and there are relatively few points that separate playoff contenders from pretenders. When we see games like last night, I think it is a better predictor than our quick start was. It lets me know that our hockey culture is not where it needs to be for the talent we have.

 

We will not get back to legitimacy until we obtain more talent. In the meantime, we must work from the top down to create and maintain effort despite the losses that WILL inevitably come. That is how you begin to rebuild a winner. Either that, or draft a generational player, and those are no longer available.