kipwinger

We need to get rid of all these old dudes. Remember when Bowman came in and replaced all the lazy old vets with hungry young dudes from the 89' draft? We need to do that.

A team built around MacKinnon, Barkov, Tkachuk, and Draisaitl would absolutely f*ck up a team built around McDavid, Matthews, Bedard, and Jack Hughes and everybody knows it? Wanna know why? Because size and speed and toughness matter in hockey. No team who's best player is a pansy is going to win squat when the league is full of guys just as skilled as you are but who are 6'5 and 220bls. McDavid had two secondary assists in the four games Edmonton lost to Florida in the finals. A better team with better players shut the supposed "best player in the world" down for four games and took the Cup. There's absolutely no universe where I'll ever think one of those players in the latter group is the "best player in the world". I don't care if they score 200 points, they'll never win without Messier...because he's the best player in the world.

Both Hughes and Bouchard suck. Lefty, like a lot of fans you're absolutely mesmerized by offense. But individual scoring means very little in terms of team success. Hughes pads his stats against bad teams all season long and gets worked over in the playoffs. Don't believe me? In the Edmonton series (which Vancouver lost), Hughes had 4 secondary assists, 1 primary assist, no goals, and was held scoreless in three other games. Bouchard is even worse. They're just easy offense guys. Remember when Bert and AA had 30 goals for the Wings? Is that because they're good, or because they were gifted prime offensive opportunities which padded their stats, but also meant that the team overall was destined to fail because we had limited players in important roles. Fans always get this wrong about hockey. They think offense is indicative of quality play as opposed to quality minutes. Take any loser and give him top six minutes and powerplay time and you'll see their numbers thrive while the team fails. Remember Abby on the top line? Remember Ian White on the top pair? Career numbers for both those individuals but the team was worse off for it. Quinn Hughes and Evan Bouchard suffer from the same problem as Erik Karlsson does. They're only good at scoring, and so to maximize their value you have to play them a lot (so they score a lot) but that also means that they'll be on the ice for a bunch of things they're not good at, like keeping opponents from the crease, protecting leads, winning board battles, defending against top players. And because they don't do those things well, but are still on the ice, you get cycled and scored on a bunch. This is exactly the reason Patrick Kane blows too.

Go look at my pre-season predictions the last two years. I think Edvinsson's already better (despite thinking Seider is very good) and the only reason he's not outscoring Seider is because he's not getting top powerplay opportunities...yet. I was thinking about it the other day and they really remind me a lot of Pronger and Niedermayer. Both are good at pretty much every aspect of the game, but Seider (like Neidermayer) excels more than his partner in the offensive zone, and Edvinsson (like Pronger) is better a stopping plays and shutting down the opposition. As a pair they're unstoppable.

Last season Detroit was a winning team that lost games they shouldn't have because they lacked depth and they were bad defensively. This year they're a losing team that cares more about trying to shut opponents out defensively than actually winning hockey games.

Maybe, but nobody is talking about Ray or Larkin for the Hart Trophy like they are for Hughes.

I mean, they’ve taken high offensive upside picks a lot in the 2nd and 3rd round under SY. Lombardi, Mazur, Beecher, Plante, Buchelnikov, Noah Dower Nilsson are all high offense guys.

Looks like we got a real one in Max Plante too. Kids scoring at a really good rate for a D+1 player in the NCAA. He’s producing about like Larkin did in the same league at the same age. Apparently he’s grown too. Heard on a podcast in the fall that he’s 6ft or 6’1 now, according to Max Bultman.

I don’t disagree that they score a lot. I don’t think they’re tough enough to make the kinds of winning plays it takes to lift the Cup. I feel the same way about the Leafs stars, the other Hughes brothers, etc. they all score a zillion points and get beat in the playoffs. Whoopdie doo!

Cossa is as good a goalie prospect as you could possible hope to have. He's outperformed Wallstedt at every step of their respective AHL careers, and his numbers are in line with what Askarov accomplished at the same age. He's without a doubt the best goalie prospect outside the NHL (I know he's up right now). He'll lead GR to a long playoff run this spring and he'll make the Red Wings as a backup to Talbot next fall. He's the real deal. And Augustine might end up being better one day.

Seider for sure had some jump last night. The whole team looked like they were comfortable and playing loose and not “gripping their sticks too tight”. I’m sure Lalonde hated it. Like Babcock before him, he’d rather lose a game 2-1 than win a game 6-5.

Quinn Hughes is a big puss who scores but can't defend. He's not shutting anyone down, he's not killing penalties. He wants to be paid like a 25 minute a night, all purpose, defenseman but he isn't one. He's Mike Green 2.0 We have studs coming at every position. Time to get a real winning coach to teach them how to play properly. Not Jay Woodcroft. I want Quenneville.

There is nothing that pisses me off more than players looking for calls. 9 times out of 10 if you stop skating to engage the refs or sell a call you'll get burned...just like Debrincat did. I was really excited about Debrincat a year ago and now I see why he's bounced around a bit. He's streaky and is charmin soft on the puck. Perron and Sprong would give you more goals at a lower cost and wouldn't be such ladyboys about it. SY kept the wrong guys. Wouldn't you rather have Perron, Fabbri, Walman, and Ghost than any combination of Kane, Tarasenko, Gustafsson, Maatta, Holl, Petry? I would. I'm very tired of half-assed veterans with nothing to play for.

I think we’ve got talent, even top end talent, coming at every position. Add MBN, Mazur, Lombardi to the wings, Danielson at center, Cossa and Augustine in goal, and ASP on defense to the lineup and fill in around them in free agency/trade.

Jon Buccigross's Red Wings observations from the game last night. Gotta say I agree with most of these (minus Rantanen). https://x.com/Buccigross/status/1864323161375768884

Debrincat goes down easy looking for a call and the Wings lose in OT. If he’s skating hard thats a Wings breakout and instead we lose. F*ck that dude.

I like Ras on the top line and powerplay. I don’t like Larkin and Raymond on the PK.

I loved the plus minus thing, it was a lot of fun.

Anybody have “Quenneville to Detroit” as a bold prediction? Lots of smoke On this rumor.

I don't even really care about the returns (within reason) because I think the on-ice impact would be a big addition by subtraction. I'm all for having quality, hard working, veterans around to provide leadership and push the young guys to steal roster spots. I'm not for gifting roster spots to underachievers who don't feel any motivation to perform. Like I said, guys like Kane and Tarasenko have nothing to play for. Same with Petry. At this point they're just cashing checks. Get gone from here Satan!!!!

Just what we needed, another aged vet with nothing to play for. Stamkos is on pace for 45 points. Hard pass. Bullet dodged.

TL;DR THERE ARE RULZ GADAMMIT!!!

If I recall Matt is a pretty public guy right? He's all over socials and whatnot? Someone who has those platforms should tag him in a post saying that the site has become overrun by Russian bots, vulgarity, racism, and vitriolic political arguments. Specifically mention how people casually throw around offensive terms about black people, homosexuals, and women and that Matt has been contacted over and over and doesn't bother to do anything about it. Let all his friends/followers see him tagged in the post and see if that gets his attention. I bet he pays attention after that considering he's a pretty vocal liberal online from what I remember.

This team isn't going anywhere until we've got two or three quality (not just serviceable) centers, four quality defensemen, and a regular NHL caliber starting goalie...at the same time. We've got one quality NHL center and it looks like Kasper and Danielson will slot in right after Larkin, but we aren't there yet. We've got two quality defensemen (Edvinsson and Seider) and it looks like ASP will be a third. We need four. I'd trade for Ivan Provorov. We have zero (long term) NHL caliber goalies. Talbot has been a stud, just like Bernier was a few years ago, but he's not a long term solution. Cossa is a beast and Augustine might be even better, so I'm not worried, but they're not ready yet. The only position where we've got actual talent aside from those guys is at wing, which is the least important position and the easiest to find talent in UFA. Our team is built in an idiotic way. The common refrain is that you build from the net out, and SY does seem to be doing that (to his credit). But we need a little more time to get those guys in NHL roster spots. IMO that means two things, 1) promote guys when they're ready and not let unenthusiastic vets crowd them out (Berggren, Edvinsson, AlJo, Kasper), and B) be just a little more patient with the guys who aren't quite ready (Danielson, ASP, Cossa) My list of tradeable assets from most to least valuable: 1. Dcat: this guy is a puss and is a total passenger. A contender with scoring/powerplay issues might be interested. 2. Talbot: He's been a stud so he's valuable. But I'd be bummed to move him because I think Cossa could learn a lot from him next season. 3. Compher: Marco makes this dude redundant as 2C and we only need one of Compher/Copp to be the 3C. 4. Kane/Tarasenko: Old, slow, unmotivated scoring wingers will only fetch marginal returns, but I'd be happy to replace either of these guys in the lineup with Mazur (as soon as he's healthy). 5. Rasmussen/Veleno: Both are solid defensively and don't cost much, which I'd imagine would appeal to contenders who need help on the defensively side of things. 5. Chiarot/Petry/Copp/Motte/Fischer: No real value here, either because the player is too expensive or because most organizations have guys like this already.

When last we spoke the Griffins were on a tear and all the guys you'd want to be leading that charge were the ones carrying the water. A few games later and...that's still basically what's going on. Lombardi is leading the charge, but Danielson is looking really good too. Pair this with the fact that we've got the 2nd best goalie in the AHL, leading scorer in the KHL and the best defenseman in the SHL. Other prospects of note, Finnie is dominating the WHL to the point where its absurd for him to be in that league. MBN is also playing like a stud in the SHL and Augustine is again dominating the NCAA. Also happy to see Ondrej Becher healthy and with the Griffins. I have him pegged as my darkhorse prospect so it's good to see him getting time, and producing, in the AHL.