Buppy

Larkin-Z-Abby Tatar-Pav-Jurco Gus-AA-Pulk Helm-Glen-Sheahan or Gus-Z-Abby Tatar-Pav-Shea Larkin-AA-Helm Jurco-Richards-Pulk Kronwall-Smith Dekeyser-Ericsson Quincey-Green or Dekeyser-Ericsson Kronwall-Marchenko Smith-Green

Green switches off fairly often, doesn't help. Our puck movement on the PP is abysmal.

Not me. If we lose in OT I'm throwing the point in the garbage.

True to a point. While possession is an excellent means of playing defense, even the very best possession players will still be playing defense ~40-45% of the time 5v5. Kane is not one of the best, and going off shot metrics, he's playing defense about 49% of the time. Traditional defensive skills are still and always will be very critical. Any highly skilled player, like Kane or Crosby or Ovie or any other star that gets criticized for poor defense, that puts in an honest effort is going to be at least decent defensively, and probably even above average. That effort is just as or even more important than possession ability. Comparisons to someone like Glendening aren't really fair. No one is going to say Glenny is a more effective player than Kane, or even Tatar. No one thinks his superior defensive play outweighs his far inferior offense. But his defense is better. Even though his possession metrics are crap, used far more often in the defensive zone, and often matched against top offensive players, he's still on the ice for fewer goals against than Kane or Tatar. People may overrate the defensive ability of players like him, because there's nothing else worth praising, but that doesn't mean he's actually bad defensively. For most teams, whoever fills out the bottom of the roster probably isn't going to generate much offense, so you might as well have the best defensive guy in there. If you can use those guys in the tough defensive situations to save your top players for more offensive use, all the better.

We should start a write-in campaign to nominate someone to play him. Completely off the wall choice that doesn't fit the role at all, like Jonah Hill or Kevin Hart.

Except that's not even close to what was said. Go back and look at Bill's first post. What you're saying is what everyone arguing against Bill is saying. Average goals per game during Gretzky's career: About 3.5 Average goals per game during Crosby's/Ovechkin's career: About 2.8 Not as dramatic a difference as it's often made out to be. About 25% higher. Gretzky averaged about 142 points per year for 20 years. Nearly 2 points per game. Adjusted for era that's still about 113/114 points per year. 1.5 per game. Average. Over 20 years. At 36/37 yo, he scored 90 points in a season where scoring was lower than any year Crosby or Ovie have played. Crosby and Ovie have averaged 90-ish points, 1.32 and 1.16 per game, and neither has yet reached their declining years. Highly unlikely that Ovie catches Gretzky's goals. Maybe adjusted for era, since he's more of a pure goal scorer. But he still needs 200 more goals to do even that.

If Gretzky had been born in this era, all his training, practice, workout routines, etc would have been different. There was allot more to Gretzky than natural talent and s***ty goaltending. It was practice, dedication, and intelligence. So yeah, I think he would be doing what Crosby and Ovie have been doing, and more.

Wouldn't be hitting 200 I agree, but he was way better than everyone else in that era. I'd say he would have been leading the league in any era. And yeah, Jagr has probably not gotten the recognition he deserves, most likely for being overshadowed by Lemieux and not winning any Cups at his peak. But he certainly is among the all-time greats.

I don't know or care much about Frk. Taking 3 years to adapt to the AHL doesn't inspire much optimism. But Pulkkinen's offensive awareness and passing are good. He'll go to the net, follow up plays, anticipates well. He's engaged all over the ice. Decent along the boards, especially for a little guy. His speed, quickness, and puck-handling are ok. Basically everything to be a decent secondary scorer. Needs to get a bit stronger and more importantly he needs more experience in how to deal with NHL competition. I'm sure you'll disagree, but it's all beside the point anyway. The entire reason for the existence of the AHL, or at least for the affiliation between the NHL and the AHL is to develop prospects. Take kids whose skills aren't yet ready for the NHL, and get them ready. If a kid has good NHL-level skills from the start, they aren't even going to be in the AHL in the first place. And development doesn't stop when you get to the NHL either. Pretty much every player will still improve from where they start. Pulkkinen wouldn't have produced in the AHL the way he did if all he could do was shoot. Wouldn't have made an AHL team at all. Wouldn't have been drafted. Wouldn't be on an NHL roster now. Wouldn't have produced what he has so far, which is similar to what Tatar and Nyquist did in the early stages of their careers. But even if you don't agree about what kind of skills he has right now, the important thing isn't what he is right now. It's how he develops from now.

Again, gross oversimplification. Like saying Larkin and AA can't do anything but skate fast.

This is a fallacious question. Not only begging the question as to whether or not a player is actually sub-par everywhere else, but also ignoring the entire crux of the argument. My point is that it is how well a player develops that determines how successful they will be, rather than how good they are at the moment. Even so, players like Nyquist, Tatar, Hudler, the Sedins, Ribiero, and many, many more are good players even though they don't do much besides score.

But you're ignoring what is by far the most important factor in determining how well a player will translate to the NHL: development. You're essentially saying that whatever a player is in the AHL is all they can ever be. But if that were even remotely true, then every decent player with even "one trick" would have scored at a high level, and any player with a full set of skills would have dominated at a level that would make Pulkkinen look like Drew Miller. Your last sentence is just wrong. For one, it's not really accurate. A gross oversimplification. Secondly, there are and have been literally hundreds of successful "one-dimensional" players in the NHL. Continued development and improvement is so much more important than whatever number of "tricks" you want to simplify a player down to.

Only partially true. If it was only a matter of AHL defense/goaltending sucking, then every halfway decent player would score like Pulkkinen did last year. Players who do that are better than other AHL players. It's just that being better than AHL players doesn't guarantee that a player will continue to develop, or continue enough to do the same in the NHL at least. Some are at their peak already, and will flare out in the NHL, some will improve proportionately and be similar, and some are below their peak and will be even better in the NHL.

I doubt Wideman cares about the games nearly as much as the money he's losing. He could get some of that back if the arbitrator rules in his favor.

It balances because over time, there will be shifts where the opposing team gets their top players out against your bottom players, or vice-versa. Injuries/line-juggling move a player up/down in the lineup. And it's not like teams have only one good player or line. A top player may have a lot more time against a specific player (like Dekeyser may play more minutes against Crosby), but if you look more of an overall picture (like Dekeyser against "good offensive players") it will be more even. Yes, if you compare a player with a coach making a concerted effort to shelter him to a player with a coach giving them all the toughest assignments, there will be a difference (though I'd bet less than you'd think). But that's the absolute extreme. http://war-on-ice.com/series.html will show head-to-head matchups for all games between two teams in a given season. You can use that to look at who a player played with and against to get an idea. For example: On the actual site, you can mouse-over the squares to see actual minutes. For the Wings, Kronwall, Ericsson, Dekeyser, and Quincey are all used about the same. Smith, Green, and Marchenko tend to be more sheltered. I'm not going to go through every bit of data for all the hundreds of players in the league, but I have to believe that if there was a big difference, it would show up in the stats. I suspect that no matter what, people who don't like what the data says are going to dismiss it anyway.

With all the talk about Kindl, and Smith being scratched for E, made me think we could use a thread for our defense pairs. To kick things off I figured I'd look up some stats. http://www.puckalytics.com/superwowy.html My new favorite toy. Not counting Kindl, we've had 8 different pairings together for significant time, and a handful of other combos for at least a few games. Stats for the top 8 pairs below: Pairing 5v5 Minutes GF/60 GA/60 GF% CF/60 CA/60 CF% OvDZS% Goals +/- Ericsson + Dekeyser 347 2.42 1.38 63.68% 43.23 51.18 45.79% 47.10% +6 Kronwall + Green 336 1.61 2.50 39.17% 51.06 47.85 51.62% 62.50% -5 Smith + Green 285 2.10 1.89 52.63% 62.07 42.92 59.12% 74.80% +1 Dekeyser + Quincey 273 1.32 2.42 35.29% 44.51 51.56 46.33% 49.20% -5 Kronwall + Ericsson 230 1.83 1.30 58.47% 46.93 57.36 45.00% 46.60% +2 Smith + Marchenko 224 2.94 2.67 52.41% 52.41 43.58 54.60% 52.80% +1 Dekeyser + Marchenko 147 2.04 1.63 55.59% 44.50 50.63 46.78% 33.30% +1 Ericsson + Marchenko 124 2.42 2.42 50.00% 52.30 48.43 51.92% 46.50% E Kronwall + Green was notably bad. E + Deke have been the best pairing, results-wise. The poor possession metrics suggest that might be anomalous, but could also be limiting opponents to low quality chances. Both E and Dekeyser see the same thing with Kronwall and Marchenko respectively. Smith + Green was very sheltered, but had great possession numbers. Goal numbers both for and against not so great relative to the shots. Could also be anomalous. Deke + Q has been bad, though they were good last year. Kronwall + E better than last year, but still poor offense and possession numbers. Marchenko with both Smith and E has GA numbers higher than they should be, could be an anomaly or too many high-quality chances against. Deke + Marchenko has been very good for being so heavily used in the defensive zone. Quincey is maybe under-represented since he's only played about 1/2 as much as the others. But overall, E+Deke and Smith+Green have both been good. Q looks expendable to me, especially if Kronwall and March work together. Discuss

Prevailing opinion on QoC seems to be that it balances out over time. For all that you try to get favorable matchups for your guys, the opposing coach does the same. Not that it would end up exactly equal, but that it wouldn't have as much impact as people think, at least for players that play a lot of minutes. I put together some numbers for quality of both teammates and competition so you can see the differences aren't huge. Someone should probably do some recursive analysis, but that's far more work than I want to do unless someone's paying me. Player Name TOIC OGF60 OGA60 OGF% CCF60 CCA60 CorC% DEKEYSER 17.79 2.19 2.11 51 54.46 54.11 50.16 ERICSSON 17.73 2.17 2.13 50.4 54.59 53.8 50.37 GREEN 17.18 2.06 2.1 49.5 53.57 53.54 50.02 KRONWALL 17.51 2.1 2.14 49.5 54.11 53.71 50.18 MARCHENKO 17.27 2.09 2.08 50.1 53.53 53.78 49.88 QUINCEY 17.73 2.18 2.16 50.3 54.44 55.55 49.5 SMITH 17.09 2.04 2.08 49.5 53.11 53.6 49.77 Player Name TOIT TMGF60 TMGA60 TMGF% TCF60 TCA60 CorT% DEKEYSER 17.02 2.13 1.99 51.7 50.97 48.63 51.18 ERICSSON 16.79 1.92 2.04 48.5 50.41 48.84 50.79 GREEN 16.7 2.12 1.78 54.4 52.03 47.52 52.27 KRONWALL 16.9 2.15 1.9 53.1 51.61 48.62 51.49 MARCHENKO 16.53 2.02 1.87 52 51.85 47.83 52.01 QUINCEY 17.3 2.07 1.85 52.8 51.7 49.02 51.33 SMITH 16.36 1.78 1.91 48.3 52.43 48.1 52.16 TOI is time on ice per 60 minutes 5v5 time only, not per game. Difference of less than a minute top to bottom. Fairly small range across all the different stats. Players that face better competition usually also play with better teammates. I believe it's a factor worth considering, if someone ever puts more work into it, but I don't think it would make any huge difference.

Not sure about "players as a whole", but damn, Sakic's wrist shot would still be one of the best in the league. We still would've won if we'd had Sergei, Kozlov, Ozzie, and Vernon.

Seems now that many of the better defensemen around the league are young guys on cheap RFA deals. Makes E's deal look worse than it really is. The length is troublesome since it makes him hard to move, but the hit is fair.

Projected lineups: RED WINGS Henrik Zetterberg - Pavel Datsyuk - Justin Abdelkader Dylan Larkin - Andreas Athanasiou - Brad Richards Tomas Tatar - Riley Sheahan - Gustav Nyquist Tomas Jurco - Luke Glendenning - Teemu Pulkkinen Niklas Kronwall - Alexey Marchenko Jonathan Ericsson - Mike Green Danny DeKeyser - Kyle Quincey Petr Mrazek Jimmy Howard Injured: Drew Miller (knee) Scratched: Brendan Smith, Xavier Ouellet, Darren Helm Rotoworld reporting that Helm's been sick, but seems ready to go now. So likely in over Jurco or Pulks. AVALANCHE Alex Tanguay - Nathan MacKinnon - Gabriel Landeskog Mikhail Grigorenko - Matt Duchene - Jarome Iginla Blake Comeau - Carl Soderberg - Shawn Matthias Cody McLeod - John Mitchell - Jack Skille Erik Johnson - Francois Beauchemin Nick Holden - Tyson Barrie Chris Bigras - Andrew Bodnarchuk Semyon Varlamov Calvin Pickard Injured: Jesse Winchester (head), Brad Stuart (back) Scratched: Zach Redmond, Reto Berra, Andreas Martinsen

By secondary I mean the "Next 3" category from the chart I posted earlier in the thread. Specifically for us, Tatar, Nyquist, and Abby. I'm sure not playing with D and Z is a big part of it, but may also be something systemic. Almost every player on the team is down from last year. The PP is the biggest noticeable difference. Our 5v5 scoring is about the same, though you'd think it should have improved with the addition of Larkin. Maybe it's just more decline from D and Z, but it could be something with Blashill.

I think this argument is getting a little confused. No one's saying it's not possible to find really good players with later picks. Just that isn't possible to do so consistently. A couple years ago I went over the draft success for every team. The Wings at that time were notably better than average in the 2nd and 3rd rounds, and we were only like a 20-25% success rate at finding NHL players, let alone very good ones. Beyond the 3rd round things were mostly even. Late round success is almost entirely luck, and even late-first and mid-round picks are as much luck as anything else. (Goalies excepted, since very few are taken in the early rounds. Take one in the 3rd round and it's probably going to be a top 5 prospect for that year.) Sure, 4 of the top 11 scorers (Thornton and Pavelski are tied) were picked after the 1st round (technically 3, Panarin wasn't drafted at all). But also 4 were picked 1st overall, and another was 2nd. Out of 824 skaters to play so far this year, 69 were picked top 5, 120 in the top 10, 166 in the top 15, 281 for the 1st round total. That spans, with a few exceptions, about 20 years of drafts. So, close to 70% of the top 5 picks are playing, 60% top 10, a little over 50% top 15, a little under 50% overall for the first round. 424 other drafted players, out of like 3500-4000 picks. 100-odd undrafted out of whatever uncountable number of possibilities. That doesn't account for those who aren't playing yet, nor those who are already gone, but that wouldn't change the numbers significantly. Consistently finding NHL talent, period, is practically impossible outside the top picks. You need good scouting and development just to find one per year. For truly high-end players, it is absolutely impossible.

Yzerman was always awesome. Extra awesome in the Bowman era because he still "lit it up" pretty damn well. No one in the late 90s was scoring like players did in the late 80s. Given that and being in his 30s, Yzerman's offense would have been impressive even without the defensive play. Though back on topic, our secondary scoring is a little above average, even with Nyquist and Tatar scoring less than last year. Our depth scoring hasn't been great, as some thought it might be, but it's not too bad. Scoring from our defense is poor and our primary scoring sucks. Yet the thing most commonly talked about for change is the secondary scoring.

Wow, almost as old as the web itself! I had no idea. Congrats and thanks to all involved

He has 14 goals. And it's only been 1 month.