Buppy

The year before this Nyquist was 3rd in the league (though a little short of 750 minutes, so had to go to 500). Zetterberg was 14th. Tatar was 40th. Datsyuk was only 80th. With a similar roster we scored almost 20 more 5v5 goals last year, despite all the injuries. Tampa Bay, also with much the same roster was significantly worse last year. There is quite a bit of year to year variance. Fact is, Hockey is a chaotic system. A lot of it defies easy explanation. There are probably 1000 different reasons why we struggled 5v5 this year. To even begin to try to explain you'd need an in depth analysis of nearly every minute of every game. But even that, being that we're talking about humans and not machines, the best you may come up with is: at what seems a bit of an inordinate rate, somebody zigged when we needed a zag. We are not a bad offensive team. That we were much better on the PP than we were 5v5 just looks like an anomaly. Chicago struggled to score this year too. Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Nyquist, and Tatar are all good top 6 forwards. Abby, whatever some may think of him, performed like a good a top 6 forward this year. You'll find few teams with a 5/6 forward that's markedly better. Whether he can continue to do it I guess we'll have to wait and see. I don't see any reason to think we really need to replace him. Franzen may not come back, and that would create a hole in the top 6. That's our only problem for now. We have some guys that might be able to step up, but none that inspire tons of confidence so adding someone might be the way to go. But I don't think anyone needed a bunch of stats and insinuations that all our forwards suck to realize that. And we do not "need" to replace Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Kronwall in the next 3 years. That is ludicrously unrealistic. If we can find even 1 in the next 3 years and the other 2 within 3 years after they retire it would be remarkable.

Your denial of reality is hilarious.

Your point is irrelevant because we're not trying to build a team solely with drafting. Weiss, Miller, Quincey, Glendening, and Dekeyser, plus Cole and Zidlicky this year. No stars, but comparable to many of the players on your list. We've targeted several others. We will pursue UFAs this offseason. We will look at trades. Whether we get anything done, we'll see. Most likely we will do something, but nothing that will satisfy you.

So none of the examples you gave earlier would have been good enough for you either? Star players hardly ever get traded. Or become UFAs. Maybe 1 or 2 a year. Less if you define star as narrowly as you do. That we haven't been able to add much through trade or free agency in the last few years is hardly indicative of some organizational bias against it. It's just how things go. We've tried to do more on both fronts, but it hasn't worked out. Again, it happens to every team.

Position won't be final until the end of the Ana-Cal series. 19th or 18th. I'm no expert on prospects, but Thomas Chabot and Oliver Kylington look pretty good.

We did. End of game 4. Worked like a charm. For TB. Most of Johnson's points came when he was able to get away from Glendening.

Well, the three games we won were the three games that Miller and Glendening played the most. Smartass-ness aside, if Tatar and Nyquist weren't getting much done in the time they did have it's illogical to think they'd have done much more with a few extra shifts per game. It's not like they were playing 8 minutes. Plus, some of Johnson's TOI was on the PK. Zetterberg got 18 minutes, basically none on the PK, (more ES+PP time than Johnson) and he didn't manage much either.

LOL. Came up a week ago, and that thread is still on the first page.

Exactly, though 3rd line in the playoffs. Jurco-Sheahan-Andy was the 4th line. Jurco and Andy deserved to be below them. Sheahan is debateable, and he was getting 14 min/g, so not like he was dramatically underused. Abdelkader proved to be a good complementary piece, much like Homer was. Helm was good at times too. Having guys like that gives you the option of spreading out the talent, though in our case I think it was more due to a lack of other good options, especially with Franzen out. Yeah, Babs hasn't seemed willing to use Weiss, but you could make an argument that it's been justified. All in all, there are worse problems to have than Abby and Helm being our 6th and 7th best forwards who had to move up a spot because Franzen was hurt, and Babcock using them as such.

We don't have 100% drafted players, but regardless, talent is talent. Doesn't matter where it comes from. In the past two years we've added two young 25+ goal scorers, the fact that we drafted them doesn't detract from that. That we've mostly (and perhaps permanently) lost one of the scorers we'd had hurts. That and that our big UFA signing hasn't lived up to expectations. If Franzen and Weiss had been healthy and Weiss was as productive as he was in Florida, it'd be a pretty big difference. Franzen has been as productive as Staal the past two years, and Staal was healthy for one of them. Weiss's production has been about 60% of what it was in Florida. We could have brought in Ryan (though likely at the cost of Nyquist or Tatar), and he could have gotten hurt and/or his production could have dropped (has dropped in Ottawa in fact). Hornqvist and Neal were traded for each other, and neither produced more. Lateral move. Cole is as good or better than Perron. Zidlicky isn't great, but filled a need. Yes, there are moves made for high quality players each year, from trades, UFAs, or promoting prospects. But not necessarily by every team every year. We have made some of them. What we've added at forward is as good or better than most teams. On defense, we've missed out on a few UFAs we tried to get. That does not mean we are not a team that makes those moves, or that we're trying to win a Cup with only drafted players. It only means that a few UFA defensemen chose other teams. Sucks that it's happened a few times in a row at a time when we really need it, but that's life. It's happened to every team, and will happen to every team again.

No, some teams have more than 1.

Well, there is a logical specific criterion: 30 teams, 30 #1s. It makes sense. Now, if you want to qualify it further and say good #1 or #1 for a contending team, maybe you go top 15 or top 10, and maybe there Kronwall falls short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgIvgyDPII&feature=youtu.be

I was thinking that with the emergence of Hoffman and Stone, they might be willing to part with the somewhat underperforming Ryan. Of course, if they did they probably wouldn't want him going to us. Also, they'd probably be looking for some good veteran leadership, probably at center, and Pav and Hank are about all we have that fits. Maybe Helm, but we'd have to add a lot. Pipe dream anyway. Not interested in Neil.

Both Washington and Nashville are better both offensively and defensively than they were last year. Nashville scored 13 more 5v5 goals this year over last, 12 more total goals. Hardly any dramatic difference, and easily attributable to the personnel changes. Could a different coach get a little more offense? Maybe. Hell, seems often a new coach gives a team a spark, for a year at least. But I wouldn't necessarily expect it, nor would I expect much more out of Nyquist or Tatar. They're doing pretty damn well already.

But no team has won the Cup the first time they won the PT. 0-15 6 of the 9 2nd-time winners did win the Cup. So far, all of the 3rd-time winners have won, though the Rangers will probably change that. None of the 4th or 5th-timers have won, but all of the 6th-timers have. Obviously something is going on.

I wasn't trying to say that he made us one of the top offensive teams, just that he didn't hurt. It was our players that did it, and our players are the reason we aren't as good now. So I wouldn't expect anything much different with a new coach.

10-11 season we were one of the highest scoring and shooting teams in the league. 11-12 we dipped a little but were still decent. When Lidstrom left we took a nose dive, gpg starting to rebound now, though shots are still down. 7 years of Babcock and being at or near the top of the league in offense. We lose one of the best possession players of our era (maybe any era), and our offense drops 1/2 a goal per game. Shots for go down. Shots against go up. And you think it's the coach. Yeah... Babs may be a "defense first" coach, but for most of his career his teams have been near the top in shots for. Sure doesn't seem like his philosophy limits offense at all. Even 03-04 Ducks, despite not much offensive talent, were 4th in the league in shots.

3 years, maybe you could say 4 if you want to stretch a bit. Some might even say 2. Some might even say it's just prep work for the real rebuild that won't truly start until Pav and Hank are gone. We were still one of the best teams in the league in 09-10 and 10-11. Only slipped a little in 11-12.

Abby is as skilled (more really) as Holmstrom ever was. Helm was only in the top 6 because Franzen was hurt. Maybe he might get up there to give us the luxury of a more skilled 3rd line, but that doesn't make us less of a skill team. The only reason Miller and Glendening were getting that much time was because they were on the PK ~4 min/game. The matchup against Johnson maybe accounted for a couple more. But honestly, if Nyquist or Tatar couldn't do much in the ~110 minutes they each played in the series, should you really expect another 15-20 min to make any difference. Nyquist and Tatar both came close to 30g, and over 50p. Not sure any other coach or system would have done any better. You always talk about Babcock's system like it's designed to stifle our offense, and it just isn't true. In his first 7 years here, the team led the league in shots 3 times, 2nd 3 more times and 5th once (after Rafi retired). Led in scoring once, 2nd twice, 3rd once, 7th once (after Rafi retired). The other two years were 10th (after losing Shanny) and 14th (injury plagued 09-10). It's only in the last 3 years that we've fallen out of the ranks of the better offensive teams. Almost as if something about the team changed following the 11-12 season...

We are rebuilding. Half the team is 26 or under and wasn't around just a few years ago. We have a bunch more kids in the pipeline. Most teams when rebuilding are content with missing the playoffs entirely. Doesn't mean they will always be content with that. What in the world would make you people believe that being satisfied with just making the playoffs now means the organization will never aspire to anything more?

Not saying they're good signings, I'm saying they're irrelevant. Players signed to fill the bottom of the roster rarely help the team much. People just wanted players for the top lines, so they think of those signings in those terms.

25 games is 25 games, no matter how many seasons it's spread over. It's a small sample. The numbers I gave are his regular season numbers from the same 3 years. That puts him 11th (or 10th if you count Burns as a forward) in defense scoring in that span. He also plays in all situations and against the top opposition. That he hasn't had many playoff points in that time doesn't diminish that. In the last 2 years he has 1g, 4p in 11 games. Not all that good but not really that bad either. Your stats are skewed by the one year he only managed 2p in 14g. You could argue that we need a Norris caliber #1 on the basis that almost all the Cup winners in the last 25 years or so have had one. You can say that Kronwall is not Norris caliber. You can say Kronwall needs to produce more in the playoffs. You might even argue that he's a below average #1. But to say he's not a #1 at all is just silly.

25 games, all of them against some of the best teams in league and many of them where the team as a whole played poorly, is a pretty small sample size to conclude that Kronwall is not a #1, much less not even a top pair guy. 123 p in 207 g is a better indicator. He's not Norris level, but he's definitely a #1.

Seabrook is already signed for next season. He's already making $5.8, and probably won't get a huge raise. Keeping him is very plausible. Right now they look to have $7m in space. Lot of spots to fill, including Saad and a #4 defenseman.Bad, but not so bad that I think they have to move Seabrook.