kipwinger

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.

Or maybe he's paid exactly what he's worth considering he's not very good at anything aside from shooting and turning the puck over?

I don't really think those are too far off what we'll see. Except that I'm positive we're running a 1-3-1 powerplay considering it was a top ten powerplay last season. I don't really see us changing something that worked pretty well.

That’s the one, did he play?

If you think that SOMEONE needs to be at the net front on the powerplay then your first unit is cooked. None of Kane, Larkin, Dcat, or Tarasenko are optimally used there. I'd replace Tarasenko with either Copp or Compher at the net front on the first unit and then have this for the 2nd unit: Ras/Copp/Compher (net front) Berggren-Tarasenko-Raymond Seider

Gustafsson is a much better defender than Gostisbehere, but with a good portion of the offense. I really like Gus and was pitching him for the Wings a few offseasons ago. I think people are going to really like him. I think there's even a chance he plays higher in the lineup than many fans are anticipating. He was an 18 minute a night defenseman on a team that won the President's trophy and went to the Conference finals. Clearly he's not a liability in the same way Gostisbehere was. As for Copp and Compher, I think both of those guys are really great and can be big parts of a Cup contending team...just not down the middle. For instance, if Compher gave you 50ish points as a 2nd-3rd line complimentary winger (opposite guys like Kane or Dcat) would anyone be mad that he's making 5 million? Same with Copp. I can see those guys being defensively responsible wingmen for more offensively minded linemates but still able to hold their own in the o-zone.

On a different note, yall remember when everyone around here thought Gostisbehere and Sprong were about to get PAID and we'd never be able to afford them in free agency? That was pretty comical. Raise your hand if you ever said something like "Ghost is about to make 6 million per year, no way we can keep him". LOL

We got a Norwegian when we traded Ville Leino. I'm not sure if he played any games tho.

Cost us the playoffs last year. We would have easily made the playoffs if we had even gone .500 during the games Larkin was out of the lineup. That's an extremely mediocre bar for a team that was 8 points up on Tampa for the 1st Wildcard when Larkin went down in March.

Why can’t we have all of them? Move Zegras to the wing when Nate and Marco are ready for all I care. We are STILL one Larkin injury away from a disaster and Zegras can insulate us from that for a bunch of pieces we don’t need.

Also, let's just trade next year's 1st, plus Berggren (and Johansson if necessary) for Zegras already. He's put up 60+ points at center (twice) and is no more or less useful in the defensive zone as most other offensive minded centers. I really like the looks of this... Dcat-Larkin-Tarasenko Kane-Compher-Raymond Copp-Zegras-Mazur Ras-Motte/Veleno-Fischer Motte/Veleno

This is something that needs to be talked about more. We've all heard the company line "we're not going to mortgage the future to win now". But it's hard to believe that there's nothing SY could have done - aside from trading away important future assets - to gain ONE ADDITIONAL POINT. The margin of error is so thin that it's hard to buy this idea that it would be cost prohibitive to do something additional (e.g. call up Edvinsson sooner, buy at the deadline, etc.)

Me too, but I genuinely think Kasper could use more time in GR (like Edvinsson last season). Kasper is 90% of the way there, but his finishing needs more work. I'd love to see him go down to GR to start the season, play as their 1C and get top powerplay minutes, work on getting his shot off sooner (it's already fairly accurate) and round out his game. I see his floor as a Sam Bennett type (20G, 20-30A) but if he could bump that up to 70ish points a season I'd be thrilled. That said, if he comes out and has a great camp and/or lights it up his first 10-20 games in GR then bring him up for good.

Not really sure I want a top six that doesn't feature a single winger over 6ft or 200 lbs. Our forecheck would be terrible and we'd get eaten alive. Kane isn't a top line player anymore. Hasn't been in a while. He doesn't even bother trying to win puck battles or forecheck. You cannot have that on the ice for 20(ish) minutes a night and expect to win games.

Honestly, I'm not too bothered by most of the moves made in the offseason. I think we have a legitimate top six (for the most part) and added size and skill in Tarasenko. The Walman trade was perplexing from an asset management standpoint, but I think Edvinsson is up to the challenge of eating those minutes. Seider will take over for Ghost on the top powerplay and Gustafson/Edvinsson/Johansson will take over the second unit. The goaltending is marginally better and you'd have to think any two of Talbot, Lyon, or Husso will be solid enough to give us adequate goaltending throughout the season. I even really like the thought of both Berggren and Mazur on the 4th line. My only issues are the 2nd pair RHD position (still Petry or Holl) and the 2C situation (We're still only a Larkin injury away from ruin). Tarasenko-Larkin-Raymond Dcat-Compher-Kane Ras-Copp-Fischer Berggren-Veleno-Mazur Motte Chiarot-Seider Edvinsson-Petry/Holl/Johansson Maatta-Gustavsson Petry/Holl/Johansson

Buffalo had about 2,000 small, finesse, wingers. Edmonton still believes that the reason they aren't winning the Cup is because they don't score enough. It's a match made in heaven.

Ekman-Larsson replacement

To be clear, I never wanted Chychrun…but…Washington gave a worse package for Chychrun than we gave to San Jose for nothing in the Walman trade.

If Kasper was the center version of Seider then MBN is the winger version. Would have preferred Hage but I love this pick. Kid plays like Matthew Tkachuk.

I'm really not sure why we'd want Stamkos. The Lightening had him, Kucherov, Hedman, Point, and Vasilevsky and they got demolished in the first round. We've got nothing like that. So how's he going to help us before he's told old to contribute? Same deal with Kane. I'd have preferred we kept Walman and Gibson and let the young guys on the team mature and grow together. If we're not getting someone under 26 years old (e.g. Necas, Sharangovich) I'm not really sure what the point is.

NHL executives drive me crazy sometimes. Hronek at 7.2 million is way too much but Holl and Petry at 5.7 million combined is fine. Likewise a 1st and 3rd is too rich for SY to trade for Noah Hanifin but he'll pull a 2nd out of his hat to trade Jake Walman for nothing. For a team that badly needs decent defensemen we don't handle those particular assets especially well. Also: If this move was just SY clearing the deck to sign candyass Patrick Kane I'm going to be really disappointed.