kipwinger

Larkin in criminally underrated. He played 99% of his career on a historically bad re-building team and has still hovered around a point per game. Then suddenly he's got Raymond, Dcat, and Kane and he's over a point per game. What a surprise. Give the guy actual talent and he thrives, but make him drag around losers like Mantha, AA, Kubalik, and Bertuzzi and he'll get them career seasons doing all the work himself. If we win a Cup with Larkin as the 1C people will suddenly "discover" how good he is, but only after trying to convince us that they were right all along and he's only now "taking it to another level" or something dumb like that. I've got more respect for Larkin than I do for almost any other current NHL player. Half these "superstars" walked onto teams loaded with top talent (cough...McDavid...cough...Mathews...cough cough...Kucherov). Larks has been like Moses leading his people through the desert. A true leader.

Yep, my only point was that we gave up a lot to move Walman and I'm not convinced Fowler is any better than Walman was. His counting stats are slightly better and his analytics are much worse. He's undoubtedly more expensive tho when you consider we A) gave up Gibson, and B) costs more. If SY went out and acquired Fowler after moving Walman I'd be pretty irritated by the poor asset management.

Bingo. I’ve always been pumped about Gibson and apparently he’s done nothing but excel since being traded to Nashville.

Anybody know who scored in the Red and White game?

Every team has a collection of mid junk who eat minutes for cheap. That's how you can afford to pay the top of the lineup guys. Eetu Luostarinen, Nick Cousins, and Ryan Lomberg played 226 combined games for Florida last season, scored 24 combined goals, and all made about what Veleno has made up to this point.

I’m genuinely not convinced Cam Fowler is any better than Jake Walman…the guy we gave up a stud RHD prospect to get rid of. More expensive tho.

I'm loving the new Raymond contract. I expect Seider signs for somewhere just south of Larkin...something like 8.5-8.6 million per year. If we can have Raymond, Seider, and Larkin signed long term for under 30 million collectively we're in a really good position to go big game hunting in free agency over the next couple years. Huge win for us with this contract.

Either MBN is bigger than his listed size, or Nate Danielson is smaller, because they stood next to one another during the national anthem in Game 1 and MBN towered over N8.

I saw an article speculating that Toronto could trade Conor Timmons in an effort to clear space for Max Pacioretty. Any thoughts? I don’t know much about him but his stat line and analytics seems pretty strong.

It's too bad James Reimer isn't still around. His refusal to wear a jersey which promotes sexual promiscuity and drug culture would have been so inspiring for all of the christian fans.

I'm not worried about Kasper. Yall are nuts and are going to have egg all over your faces on this one.

I do agree with most of this. He reminds me a ton of Zach Hyman stylistically. Who doesn't want that guy riding shotgun on your top line? He's been awesome so far and I'm further in love with our farm system than I was before. He's a keeper and is going to look good on this team for a looooong time.

This is all just made-up media narrative because it's a slow time of year. Raymond and Seider both want to be Red Wings and they're both going to get PAID. You think it's an accident that we have just enough cap space to give them both 8.5 million dollar contracts if it comes to that? SY has a history of driving a hard bargain on contracts and this is no different. If Kyle Dubas was the GM they'd already be signed, but thankfully Yzerman uses his leverage a little bit better and gets his guys on good contracts instead of handing them the bag. Both these guys will be signed by training camp, you can bet on it.

How's everyone feeling about Michael Brandsegg-Nygard's start to the pre-season. I know its the SHL pre-season (and international friendlies) but he's got like 4 goals in 3 games or something like that. Dude can absolutely bomb the puck. I think he's going to be a great pick and I already can't wait to see him on a line with Larkin and Raymond. Can you imagine having a hard working power forward on that line who is ALSO a trigger man? I'm sold.

It means that the price is set. Either Edmonton matches or St. Louis gets them at the contract that was accepted in the offer sheet.

He's got three 20 goal seasons and two 30 goal seasons under his belt. If he's truly a comparable then I'd imagine Lucas would make less than Konecny given that his track record of success is much shorter.

You said Edvinsson didn't grab a special teams role as a rookie the way Seider did. I'm just pointing out that he did have a significant special teams role. He played over a minute per game shorthanded. And it's a little misleading to add Walman to that list since the majority of his PK time came when Edvinsson was still in GR. During Edvinsson's late season callup Walman was either injured or healthy scratched and Edvinsson did considerably more penalty killing than Walman during that period. You're welcome to think what you want about the guy, but he's pretty clearly earned the trust of the coaching staff based on his play and I don't think people are off-base when they say he's a lock for the roster based on his play during that late season call-up. Edit: Also, Yzerman confirmed during his press availability that he "expects Edvinsson to play a bigger role". He was already playing 18 minutes a night and killing penalties. Sure sounds like the GM is figuring on Edvinsson to A) make the team, and B) play in the top four.

You're welcome to think whatever you want about him but it's simply not true that Edvinsson didn't play on special teams. He was on the PK and logged more shorthanded minutes per game that "defensive" guys like Maatta, Fischer, and Veleno. It's not a stretch to imagine he'd have logged even more special teams minutes if he were trying to beat out guys like Hagg, Juolevi, etc. (as Seider did) rather than trying to take minutes from guys like Seider, Chiarot, and Walman. Overall I think it's a good thing that young guys have tougher competition for roster spots and the team is going to be better for it, but it certainly effected the types of minutes that were available to Edvinsson as opposed to Seider. But again, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I don't really care if you like the guy or not. I'm just suggesting that if I HAD to put my money on the line I'd wager that Edvinsson starts the season in the top four based on his play last year and the coach/GM comments about his play during that stretch.

They're different defensemen. Seider gets powerplay time, it's no wonder he'd score more. He was running the top powerplay from the first moment he hit the ice for the Wings. Credit to him. But that's not really going to be Edvinsson's value. He's a lot more like Mathias Ekholm, Brandon Carlo, or Devon Toews. He'll have a bunch of even strength points, few powerplay points, and be a stud defensively. I'm not worried about his points if he's making stops, and he was absolutely one of the best DEFENDERS during his late season stretch. Aside from Lalonde confirming that this was the case you can also point to the fact that he played well enough to make Jake Walman expendable. I'm not here to tell you Yzerman is "penciling him" into a roster spot. But I'd bet my paycheck Edvinsson starts the season with the Red Wings if I had to handicap it.

I might be able to quibble here or there with some of your rankings, but for the most part I agree and think you're definitely in the ballpark. For better or worse the NHL game is a physical, straight line, dump and chase, puck retrieval type of game. Fans all seem to think that every team should just play like the Russian Five and they'd dominate, but that's not really effective or realistic. There are WAY more guys that find success playing like Zetterberg than there are guys who are successful playing like Datsyuk. Our prospect pool is almost entirely built around guys that play the NHL game and I have a ton of time for it.

Agreed. And this is exactly what I think most fans are missing when they view Marco Kasper's stat line. The dude is an absolute beast at even strength, and wins almost every shift he takes. You absolutely HAVE to ice a lot of these type guys to win the depth game. Look at the clip below. This is more or less what killed Edmonton in the finals. With Draisaitl injured McDavid had to win games more or less by himself. And to his credit he did win three of them. But anytime he wasn't on the ice Florida controlled the play, and guys like Evan Rodriquez absolutely killed them because they won every puck battle and therefore dominated possession. That's why shot based "possession" metrics are so misleading. Guys that do nothing to gain possession of the puck can still grade out very well assuming they get easy zone starts and fire the puck a lot. A better metric for "puck possession" would be to look at 50/50 pucks and board battles and see how often players or teams come away with possession. Of course, that would be way harder to measure than counting shots so analytics types don't bother.

Scott Wheeler has a pretty well known bias toward flashy, east-west forwards, high scoring defensemen, and goalies with draft pedigree. He's almost never willing to change his mind about a prospect once he's pegged them as something he doesn't like. For example, he's been head over heels about Buffalo's drafting since forever and seems completely unwilling to acknowledge that A) Buffalo sucks, and B) all the best parts of their team were acquired by trade (minus Dahlin). So I'm not surprised that he doesn't like our prospects. Forwards: In the last ten years the only high scoring center to win a Cup was MacKinnon. Otherwise pretty much every Cup champion's 1C is an 80-90 point guy that plays excellent defense. I think Danielson should get there so I'd rate him a lot higher than any "offense only" center on Wheeler's list. Likewise, Stanley Cup winners are full of guys who fit the MBN profile and very few who fit the small, flashy, and skilled profile. So I'd probably rank MBN higher than most of the little high scoring guys that Wheeler no doubt ranked above him. Defense: In the last ten years no team has won the Cup while giving "offensive minded" defensemen top pair minutes...except Cale Makar. However every Cup winner has a defense full of big, two-way, workhorses that eat a lot of minutes. So I'd rank Edvinsson above all the Zeev Buiums and Zane Pareks of the world. My guess is that Wheeler did not. Goalies: Here Wheeler tends to favor draft position, despite on-ice results. I think you could make the argument that Wallstedt, Askarov, and Cossa are all pretty much in the same tier. Wheeler has given Wallstedt a pass because he's on a bad team, but seem oblivious to the fact that Grand Rapids was terrible until Cossa took over the net. Askarov's team beat GR in the Calder playoffs, but Askarov didn't play most of that series and Milwaukee was loaded with older, first round, forwards that GR couldn't contain. So the win was hardly to do with Askarov's play, and the loss was hardly to do with Cossa's play. Also...Trey Augustine might be better than all three considering his NCAA and world championship play.

The Griffs let Czarnik walk, which I think suggests one of Danielson or Kasper will be the 1C. But I don't think Nate is the guy this year. My take is that many fans don't realize how hard the AHL is, especially at center. Those are HARD minutes and Nate isn't ready for them yet. At least, he's not ready to play those minutes CORRECTLY yet. Kasper is. He was an absolute force in the Calder Cup playoffs and I fully expect him to be the 1C with Danielson and Lombardi as the 2nd and 3rd line centers (in whichever order). Obviously this changes if one of these guys has an insane training camp and preseason. On a similar note, check out these highlight packages for Danielson and our new prospect Ondrej Becher. Obviously highlight packages only show the good stuff, so all caveats are applicable here, but what I really like is how they both excel at things that are transferable. Nate's passing is sneaky good and his wrister is super accurate. Becher's one timer (especially on the powerplay) is wicked and his skating and effort are excellent. The fact that both these guys can play defense as well shouldn't be a knock on their offensive abilities. I'm excited about both players quite a bit.

Ras-Copp-Mazur is the 3rd line of my dreams.

I'm recycling two from last season. 1. Edvinsson will outscore Seider at even strength. Last year I stipulated that they'd both have to play 50 games for this to be true and Edvinsson (inexplicably) didn't meet that threshold. 2. Rasmussen will score 20 goals, 30 assists and blossom as a top power forward in the league. I made the same prediction last year but failed to account for the fact that Ras was rehabbing a broken kneecap all summer and not working on this game. This year he's got a full summer and I expect bigger things out of him. and my third bold prediction... 3. Ondrej Becher is top five on the Griffins in points per game despite starting the season in Toledo.