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Ehhh... Hronek is a totally fine second pair dman. He was awful to start the season, but has been much better since. Hard to complain with him being a second round draft pick and all. Zadina and Ras both have not done what they were drafted to do: score. Zadina was supposed to be the skilled scorer, Ras was supposed to be the monster net front presence who got all the garbage goals. Zadina developed a nice defensive game and is showing more playmaking skill than scoring. His shot needs work at the NHL level. Ras is a good defensive center on his on nights, and a disaster on his off nights. We'd like more from both, but both have plenty of time to figure s*** out.

The process happened.

lol

I'm gonna need this kid to stop making me look like an *******. Also I'm gonna need to know what kind of Matrix type sh*t allowed that shot to get through.

DO I LOOK LIKE HSJs??????? Edit: prolly not

Looked better with Vrana for sure. Trade Fabbri once Jakub returns.

.... so Zadina is blashill's fault after all

Slave to a dirty anglo? No. He is a proud and pompous baguette.

“I was telling my agent, if they will pass on me, I’m going to fill their end boards with pucks,” the newly-drafted Zadina said, via Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press.

I actually think he could be a real asset as a solid defensive winger who can gain/maintain possession and compliment more skilled offensive guys in the top six. Ideally we'll upgrade from Suter as the 2C (he'd be a good 3C) and find a playmaker to pair with Vrana. When that happens I wouldn't mind Zadina being the "other guy". I think a Roslovic/Mittelstadt/Newhook type with Vrana and Zadina would be a hellish good scoring line and Zadina's possession game would be absolutely necessary when playing with two less defensively inclined guys like that. And obviously you'd imagine his production would increase by virtue of playing with more talented offensive players as well.

Marchand suspended 3 games for slew-footing OEL. Out vs the Wings tonight. Noice.

I'm not sure if you're being partially serious or not so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I've never advocated trading, waiving, or benching Zadina. So I'm not sure why you think he's "only getting 2". I think he should be on a third line OR playing opposite someone like Vrana so that at least one player on the line can make good use of all the offensive zone time Zadina helps create. Also, if we're comparing Zadina to Mikael Samuelsson now then I think the "Is he a bust" debate has pretty much reached it's logical conclusion.

I'm probably not being precise enough with my language. A player can definitely be good without scoring. But within the context of the "Is Zadina a Bust" debate, it's probably not good asset management if a rebuilding team uses a top ten pick (passing on guys like Quinn Hughes) for a defensively responsible winger with finishing issues (see what I did there?). I'm not the authority, but I do think the value of the pick you used on a guy vs. the type of player he turns into makes a difference. For example, if we used two high end picks to trade up for Sebastian Cossa and he turns into a Jonathan Bernier type goalie I'm not going to say it was a solid pick just because he's a middle of the road player in the league for a bunch of years. You certainly expect those types of assets to yield greater results. Would that make him a bust? I dunno, but I'd venture to guess that almost nobody on LGW would take Zadina in a redraft, and that probably says something about the pick vs. his performance to date.

Both are true. I just listened to an episode of the Winged Wheel Pod (they LOVE Zadina) and they had this analytics guy (Micah Blake McCurdy from Hockey Viz) talking about all things fancy stats. As they tend to do they immediately started discussing how Zadina was this really good player and was just snake bitten (they say he has the yips) and asked if he agreed. He did and didn't. According to this guy, Zadina's defensive and possession metrics are good and he definitely tilts the ice in Detroit's favor. But he's not an unlucky offensive player (doesn't have the zips!). He's just a really bad shooter who can't finish on the chances he creates. His shot selection is really bad, and even when he's in prime scoring position his finishing is really bad relative to this rest of the league. According to this guy, Zadina's rookie season is more an outlier than the norm. This tracks with what other analytics folks conclude about Zadina. A couple takeaways: 1. Zadina's not too young, or too underdeveloped, or to unlucky, or whatever. He's just not very good right now. 2. The thing he's not good at (shooting) is one of the easier things to improve at, so there's still room for some improvement in his finishing (though probably not his shot selection). This should be encouraging to a point, but even with a pretty dramatic increase in his shooting percentage we're really not looking at anything better than a Tatar level winger here. Not bad, but definitely not what you're hoping for with a top ten pick.

I'll just be happy for him when he gets his 20th career NHL goal. It's been a long slog through three seasons, but I'm confident he'll hit the big 2-0 sometime after the All-Star break.

Im torn. Want to see us win, but we could really use the #1 overall.

Does he kick tires and like his team?

While true, the overall point of that post was to point out that both Ras and Zadina have some work to do to become more reliable, consistent NHLers, and that they both deserve flack where as Zadina gets almost all of it on his own. Having said that, it's also too early to give up on either of them.

Bergevin would bully Gorton

I would avoid Kane like a spitting cobra.

Leddy has had to play a lot with Hronek. AKA this team’s dumbest Dman. Doesn’t help. Still. He hasn’t been very good at all. If Yzerman get’s a 2nd for him it’s a wash. A 1st and he’s won the trade easy.

He´s 21 and on a 20 goal pace, which is ok. A first (#25+) and a third (#90+) guarantee you f#ck all. Time will tell, but I think the Canes got a good return if he signs a new cheaper contract.

Based on offensive production our lines should look like this: Bertuzzi - Larkin - Raymond Veleno - Suter - Namestnikov Fabbri - Rasmussen - Erne Gagner - Rowney - Zadina