kipwinger

Totally agree, having him, Hronek, and Seider in your top four would be a massive advantage for our transition going forward. You'd have a righty (Hronek) and a lefty (Dunn) running your power play units as well. If he's actually on the block I'd be trying really hard to land him.

Definitely check out Vince Dunn as well. He's really good, and he's only 23. Very good puck moving d-man. Would love him as a future partner with Seider. I don't see St. Louis trading him, except as a last resort though. I think you'd have to take some bad contracts back (maybe Jake Allen) and I think you'd be paying a premium given Dunn's age and talent.

I'll just leave this here, forgive the sh*tty music in the second one. Not mine.

He and AA both have the same agent FWIW. I don't really think it's them as much as him being an extremely aggressive negotiator with his RFAs.

He makes 1.8 million a year and had a breakout season two years ago. Then entered this season with a badly injured shoulder that severely limited his effectiveness. He has since had the shoulder operated on and should be ready to prove himself again this coming season. I watch a lot of CBJ hockey, given that I split my time between Ohio and DC and I can tell you that he was an absolutely wrecking crew in the playoffs two years ago when CBJ beat Tampa. He ate their defensemen alive. He's like Bertuzzi, except WAY BIGGER, FASTER, AND STRONGER. I wouldn't hold my breath considering Perfetti didn't even play center consistently in the OHL. But dream big I guess.

There is TONS to like about Anderson, and I agree that with his injury last year, we'd be buying low. He's big, physical, fast, and has super soft hands. Look at the goals he's scored in his career. He ain't some Zach Kassian or Tom Wilson. The guy's got skill. Anderson-Rossi-Zadina second line would be badass. Given that Columbus has shedded draft picks the last couple years I think he could be had for a mid-2nd rounder and depending on the status of his shoulder MAYBE a middling prospect. If I'm Yzerman I'm all over this.

Top of the list is Josh Anderson. That guy is a BEAST and wouldn't cost a ton to acquire. I like Vince Dunn quite a lot too.

For one, that level is production is insanely rare. Crosby did it ONCE. To do it six or seven years in a row would be nearly impossible. Secondly, as McDavid develops a more refined two-way game I'd expect his point totals to go down slightly, not up. Same thing people always said about Datsyuk, he could have scored another 30 points a season if he wasn't so committed to being good defensively.

See my edit above. Those are the types of questions I'd be asking myself if I were a GM and I was trying to figure out a players value while taking points into account. Another issue with the 1 million per 10 points scale is that it doesn't take into account RFA vs. UFA differences in pay vs. production. In general it may be that over the life of their careers a player will earn roughly 1 million per ten points, on average. But they're certainly not going to make that while they're an RFA (if they're any good), and they're certainly not going to be worth that toward the end of their careers. I obviously haven't done the math, but I presume that while players are under team control they make less than that, and then it averages out after they sign their UFA contracts (where they'll basically all get overpaid). For example, Connor McDavid ain't dropping 125 points a season for the next 7 years. In short, it's just too simplistic a benchmark to have any real use in determining value as far as I'm concerned. If I were a GM I'd probably do what Stan Bowman basically does. Squeeze value out of RFA contracts and then trade the good players before they become UFA's to keep your cupboard stocked so that you've always got more quality RFA's coming.

I don't agree with that. Madison Bowey just scored at a 27 point pace last season and I think everybody would be (rightly) pissed off if that landed him a 2.5-3 million dollar contract. And it's HARDER for a defenseman to score like that. 30 points is nothing in today's NHL. Edit: Also, there's WAY too many variables at play to distill valuation down to dollars per points. Did a guy score 30 goals or have 30 secondary assists? Did he score 30 off the fourth line or the second? Were those 30 powerplay points or 5on5 points? Does the player do anything else well, or just chip in 30 points but cost you more with his bad defensive play (Athanasiou)?

He wrote an article about it. Basically he didn't have anything to update since last season because there hasn't been a draft yet. I get it. As I understand it, he's going to update these after the draft. I generally find Pronman's evaluations to be pretty spot on, but I tend to disagree with his weighting system. If he says a guy is a good skater, he's a good skater. If he says a guy has bad decision making, he generally does. Pronman watches a TON of hockey in person, and talks to a lot of scouts. But he tends to weight his criteria in such a way that flashy guys always have more value than quietly effective guys. This is something that I've observed before as well. Back in the 2000s Datsyuk was undoubtably a flashier, more skilled, player than Zetterberg. However for most of their careers (until Z's back blew up) Datsyuk wasn't more effective. Zetterberg always took on the tougher matchups (think Crosby and Toews) and (for most of their careers) scored at a similar rate. But Datsyuk "popped", as Pronman would say, so he's remembered as being a MUCH better player. It's mostly a trick of the eyes.

If Fabbri only scores around 30 points then it will be an absolute failure of a season for him. Throughout his (limited) NHL career he's scored at a .48 ppg rate. 30 points would mean he only played about 60 games. Meaning YET AGAIN he was hurt and missed significant amounts of time. Either that or he played a full season and scored WAY below his production averages. Either case would correctly be viewed as a failure by just about any objective observer.

This doesn't really surprise me. Pronman has always been more bullish on the Wings farm system than the other Athletic prospects writer, Scott Wheeler, has been (Wheeler will do one of these too, and we'll rank higher). In part it can be explained by the fact that his assessments are based off of his initial rankings. So the more Pronman-guys you have the "better" your farm system will be. Generally not a problem, since he tends to get draft range correct most of the time. But he's been very open about the fact that he evaluates players based on the their "star potential" (my words). He really values flashy players. So he'd rank an Quinn Hughes type higher than a Seth Jones type, an Elias Petterson type higher than a Dylan Larkin type. Obviously, the problem with that is there's SOOOOO much more to the game than offensive totals. Having workhorse type guys is super important. Look at Vegas mauling Vancouver without any really dynamic offensive guys. Detroit has got a lot of that type of player as their top prospects: Seider, Rasmussen, Veleno, McIsaac, Mastrosimone all profile that way. If we went out a drafted purely on skill (let's say Raymond, Mysak, and Piorier) with our first three picks this year we'd probably jump WAY up in his rankings because of their dynamic offense, but all of those guys are VERY boom/bust.

The contract could have been signed for less and wasn't. I've given my (pretty solid) reasons for thinking so about 25,000 times now. If you choose to equate "high risk, high reward" or "I don't mind this contract" with "fair deal" then that's on you.

I've never said the contract was debilitating. I said it was an overpayment. And I've explained why. You keep changing the narrative. If I were the GM I wouldn't be willing to pay for the "hope" of a healthy season with a guy who has not, EVER, played a full NHL season. As a result, anything beyond that IMO is an overpayment. I've made that point abundantly clear. You and a handful of others are intentionally misrepresenting me now, suggesting that I'm saying the sky is falling because of the Fabbri contract. Clearly it isn't. But 2 years at 2.9 million is more than I'd have paid for a guy who is rarely healthy, only moderately productive when he is (this ain't no Malkin), and has absolutely ZERO contract leverage.

That's exactly the point, we don't know what we've got in Fabbri because he's can't string together healthy, productive, seasons. So rather than just assume his injuries are a thing of the past why not sign him to a one year deal, put the onus on him to stay healthy and produce (like I've been saying for about two weeks now), and THEN sign him to a bigger, longer, contract if he's able to do so. Also he didn't STAY healthy. He had ONE healthy season in his last FOUR. If he could STAY healthy I wouldn't be saying it was an over payment. I've only ever advocated that Fabbri ACTUALLY DO the thing you all keep giving him credit for...be a healthy, productive, hockey player. Doing something ONCE isn't a trend, if it were Justin Abdelkader would be a perennial 20 goals scorer.

Remember Franzen? Or Stephen Weiss? Edit: Also, Helm had a series of groin pulls and a broken collarbone. Kronwall broke his leg. All those injuries heal 100% and are not even close to as bad as blowing out an ACL...twice. That's a MUCH more significant injury.

Anything's possible, thought likely not probable. If that happened then everyone involved in the negotiation should be fired immediately for being horrible at their jobs. More likely the dude who updates the website got it wrong, and then corrected it.

You're allowed to think whatever you want. Unlike some on here I don't really care, and I'm certainly not going to attack you for it. TBH normally I might agree with you on a lot of this too. If a player had the pedigree and had shown a couple years with of growth, then I might be willing to pay a bit for potential. But Fabbri is a different story. To the extent that you can read into his production history (which isn't much considering his injuries and small sample sizes) he looks like he could be a Tatar-esque producer if all goes well (aside from that fact that his defensive metrics and possession metrics are abysmal and Tatar's are really really good). But the nature of his injury is incredibly serious. Blow your ACL out ONCE and you wear a knee brace for the rest of your career. Twice and who knows? But even before that he wasn't healthy. Dogsh*t players who are limited but generally healthy DO sign for 1.5 AAV. You know who else does? Inconsistent players and guys who are injured all the time. Because here's the thing, despite Fabbri's ppg average, his inability to stay in the lineup means you don't have any good idea how many points you're ACTUALLY going to get out of him. This is almost the exact same issue we had with Mike Green on his first contract, and why he wasn't worth the 6 mil AAV he was getting. His ppg average was actually pretty good, but he could never stay in the lineup long enough for that to move the needle.

I never said the deal "threatened" anything. I just said it was too high. I'm very aware of the Red Wings cap situation and dont think this deal is a problem in that respect. The money WOULD be right if Fabbri were comparable to the average. But he's not, because he's basically been injured for five f*cking seasons. He's an outlier, at the low end because there's not much to suggest he can stay healthy. I would have been fine with 1.75-1.8 at the upper limit but think the 1.5 AAV is fair considering how little he has played and the red flags that raises for me.

You can call it whatever you want. Doesn't change that face that he tore his ACL twice. No it wouldn't when you consider that he's never been able to contribute at that level consistently. If asking to prove he can stay healthy and contribute at that level, after years of inactivity, is offensive then he probably doesn't need to be on the team anyway. He's played 216 out of a possible 410 games in which he's been on an NHL roster. If you think the average player misses roughly 50% of their 5 year careers with injuries I don't know what to tell you. I don't agree that Mantha is a "good comparable". He's just good for your argument. At the time that Mantha signed his current deal he was coming off two consistent .6 ppg seasons and had no long term injury history. Fabbri, on the other hand, scored .6 ppg this year and missed most of the previous 3 years with a VERY significant injury. And even before THAT injury Fabbri has never played a full season. So really the ONLY thing comparable is that .6 ppg figure. Since then Mantha has been injured more often, but if you wanna compare broken hands and ribs and a punctured lung (all of which can heal to 100%) with two blown out ACLs (which can never be as structurally sound as they used to be) then ok.

Fabbri got 2 year, 3 million. I said a fair contract would have been 1 year, 1.5 million. I've also said it's not likely to impact that team too much, but that it probably will have some impact on how Mantha/Bert's agents pursue their contract negotiations. If you and a few others what to interpret that as some over reaction on my part that's fine, but it was a pretty measured response. Especially when you consider that you've already said you agree with my thoughts on the term, and KRsmith has already said the AAV was probably a little high.

It's not ONE injury and a "setback". He blew out his ACL twice. He's never played a full season, even before those injuries, and he hasn't since. He has no track record of health, and as a result no (consistent) track record of production, and no leverage. He could, and should, have been signed for less. I'd have qualified him at 1.5 x 1 year. He'd have signed it or sat out until training camp when he realized that he'd really like a million and half bucks to play hockey (provided he can stay healthy). No matter how often you push this "you don't like him" narrative it's never going to fit. Specifically because I've already said about 2,000 times that if he signed for one year, proved he can stay healthy and produce, that I'd be fine with a bigger and longer deal. The big mistake in your logic IMO is that you're comparing him to the average when nothing about him suggests he's comparable to the average. He's less consistent, more injured, played fewer games, and is not an arbitration eligible RFA or UFA. And that's overlooking the fact that there are serious flaws in his game and consistentcy, even when healthy. All of which is why I say give him a one year deal to prove he's closer to the mean than he currently looks. If you want to interpret all of that as "Kip just doesn't like him" then go ahead.

Makes total sense too. Classic case of recency bias. The only time that most Red Wings fans have ever paid any attention to Fabbri was during his 52 games stint here, and he looked pretty good, so he must be good right? Never mind every single other thing about his career.

I'm not "acting like" anything. I've made it very clear EXACTLY what I think his contract should have been, which is about half of his current AAV for half the term. As for the bold, saying something doesn't make it so. If you "think" his injury proneness will go away after one season in which he played 61 games then that's on you. I think it's naive, but whatever. I'm more inclined to have Fabbri prove he can stay healthy rather than just assume so. But it's whatever, the contract is signed, and more than half the people who attacked me for saying it was an overpayment have now conceded that it was.