kipwinger

Jesus, the best stream I can find is a Bruins stream. I have to listen to Jack Edwards for the next three hours. He started the telecast calling Marchand’s infraction an “alleged slew foot”. Lol.

In other news, Jack Hughes gifted an 8 year, 8 million dollar contract after scoring 55 points in 119 NHL games. Pretty ballsy of the NJ front office.

LOL

Nah, I misspoke. It's obviously Blashill's fault.

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.

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.

Random powerplay thought: Didn't Erne score a bunch of his goals last year from the bumper spot on the powerplay? I think he did. I wouldn't be pissed if he was given a chance at the role on the 2nd unit. Top Unit: Bert Raymond-Larkin-Vrana Seider 2nd Unit: Ras Suter-Erne-Zadina Leddy/Hronek

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 actually give him credit there. Our powerplay is up to 15% from 11% last year, and our overall offense is middle of the league, up from dead last at the end of last season. A couple of factors, obviously personnel makes a difference. We added two top four defensemen, a top six forward, a goalie that can play the puck, and got a bunch of guys healthy. Second, we're still only 20 games into this season so there's a lot of room for the offensive numbers to rise and fall. Based on my viewings I fully expect the PP to continue to get better though. Tanguay's system is WAY different than Bylsma's. MUCH more dynamic. I think it's going to take a while for guys to be fully comfortable. Also, the personnel on the two units has switched around quite a bit. I expect Seider to continue to improve personally in the QB role, and the top unit to improve overall when Vrana comes back.

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.

So is Alex Tanguay pretty much a guarantee for the next coach then?

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.

At his current scoring rate he's have about 40 goals after 240 games, so that's something to look forward to. The good news is that I've watched the last 20 games and can definitely see an improvement in his shooting. He's getting way better. Definitely not trying to fire low percentage shots through the goalie's logo anymore. So I expect that shooting percentage to take off at any time.

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.

If they were going to bring Gorton in as the Pres. of Hockey Operations and have a French speaking GM working under him why not just keep Bergevin?

I don't know a ton about Copp, does he actually play center in Winnipeg?

With Larkin injured last season Rasmussen finished the year as the 1C for this team and looked like he was able to keep up with better players (mentally and physically). I figured after a good summer in the gym (due to injuries, his first full offseason since he was drafted) he'd be a beast as a 3C. Instead he's shown none of the intensity or skill he showed a year ago and doesn't look any stronger.

They're soooooo terrible. I hate them. My dad and I were watching the same the other night and openly laughing at how dumb those helmets look. Not quite as much as the new Devil's "jersey" sweaters, but a horrible choice nonetheless.

The reason why there's no debate about Rasmussen is that those who thought he'd take a big step forward this year (myself and a few others) don't feel compelled to make excuses for the guy. He sucks. He's failed to take that step forward, and it's nobody's fault but his. The same is true for Zadina. The only difference is that there seems to be a pretty strong Zadina contingent around here unwilling to admit the same things about him. You guys keep saying we have "unrealistic expectations" for Zadina but we're only having this debate because some folks are having a hard time admitting he's worse than they'd expected him to be. Yet somehow we're "unrealistic" when we insinuate he's much closer to his floor than his ceiling.

He scores in a lot of different ways too. I've seen him bury one timers, jam in rebounds, or dangle through defenders. Guys that can score in a lot of different ways usually have more success.

I'm getting progressively more juiced about this guy. Like, these aren't just "he's big and playing against 17 year old goals". He's a very consistent goal scoring threat against the best professional teams in Europe. He's the real deal.

Sodorblom: 2G Edvinsson: 2A

I think when people bring up his projection it’s for two reasons. First, because projections help set fan expectations and that’s relevant to the conversation we are having on LGW. Second, those projections reflect the opinions of more than a few professional scouts, former GMs, and other talent evaluators. It was not unreasonable to come out of that draft thinking we had a player that had the talent level of a top 3-5 pick. That is also relevant to this conversation. Edit: (To address your example) You don't buy stocks based on their price, you buy them based on how you expect them to perform. The price of any given stock is based on it's valuation (i.e. track record of success). Any investment that makes money is a good one, but some are more valuable than others. And you pay more for stocks that are going to make you more money. If you pay a lot for a stock that makes you the same as a cheaper stock, you're a bad investor. So back to your example, a stock that had devalued by 30% (from 100K down to 70K) in three months would be a riskier investment than one that's remained at 70K for those same three months. Similarly, you invest a top 5-10 pick in an NHL prospect because you expect it to perform better than a 10-15th overall pick. These players valuations are determined by everything they've done on the ice up to draft day. Ken Holland picked Zadina thinking he was getting a top 5 talent at 6th overall. Lots of people thought that. And maybe he will be. But it's hard not to think of the stock that dropped 30% in three months when thinking about a prospect who's "stock dropped" on draft day. Zadina, Veleno, Mantha. None of them have been as good as what we thought we were getting because their valuations were flawed in the first place.

It matters because draft picks are investments. Like all investments, you expect a return on them. Ideally, the more costly the investment the greater the return.

You’re moving the goalposts. First you said Blash doesn’t develop players. Those guys both developed beyond almost anyone else drafted where they were. And they did so under Blash. Now you’re saying they don’t count because they “didn’t put it together” and they aren’t on the team. They both put it together just fine as I’ve already stated (more than anyone else drafted where they were). They aren’t on the team because neither gives a s*** and couldn’t be bothered to compete. This despite Blash repeatedly telling them exactly how to improve both privately and publicly. He also gave and took away ice time, and even scratched them when it got serious. He can’t MAKE them give a s***. What’s he supposed to do, play for them? And both are the EXACT SAME players elsewhere. Kinda like it’s not Blashill’s fault.