kipwinger

Lol, so the Rangers acquired Gauthier for a middling prospect? I swear I read recently on LGW that someone would give AA AND Svechnikov for Gauthier and a 2nd.

Meh, pass. He's hurt constantly and can't score. Never reached all that potential that everyone gushed about.

I almost posted the same thing but I figured @Dabura would give me a stern talking to for bringing up what people were wrong about in the past.

Am I eating crazy pills? I responded to someone who definitely did ask if Veleno was NHL ready. Then you responded to my criticisms of his game, saying that he was better than he was earlier in the season. That's how we got here. I never addressed you once until you responded to my discussion with someone else and immediately changed the narrative to something different. Whether or not Veleno has improved over the course of the season is irrelevant to the discussion I was having. He's not good enough, offensively or defensively, to be in the NHL as of today. That's what was being discussed before you parachuted into the middle of things. It's not like I sought you out to talk about Veleno's improvement and then changed the topic to whether he's NHL ready. In fact it's the exact opposite. You jumped into a discussion about whether he's NHL ready and then changed the topic to his improvement.

It doesn't matter who said it first. You're suggesting that the way to get him to stop "rushing passes" (as CRL desribed it first) is for him to...wait for it...rush passes. You're grasping at straws.

He was moved out of a defensive role when he was swapped with Turgeon. And they did that because he was totally overmatched. If he looks better now, it's only because he's being asked to do less defending. Just like Detroit, GR uses their checking line player in defensive roles and their top six players in offensive ones. GR posts their lines before every game. Go look. Over the course of the season Veleno was moved off the defensive line and put on an offensive one with two offensive players in Terry and Svech. Edit: For the record, I've never mentioned plus/minus at all. You can't seem to shut up about it however.

This is the same sh*t that KRsmith says. It's starting to get old. I watch as many games as I can watch, and I check the box scores on the games I miss. Sue me. My assessment from that observation is that Veleno isn't scoring enough at the AHL level to justify a promotion to a top 9 role in the NHL. And I'm not seeing some top defender either. He's been moved to a scoring line, with two scoring wingers (Terry and Svech). He's not being utilized as a matchup guy (a la Glendening). H's not taking defensive zone draws. Turgeon and Pearson are doing those things. Veleno WAS on a checking line, and they moved him away from that defensive responsibility when they swapped him with Turgeon (who was the 2C). He is on the PK, which is a credit to him, but so was AA when he played in GR so I'd take it with a grain of salt. AND he still gets scored on a lot against AHL caliber scoring lines. So I'm not sure what you two are watching. If he's produced a bunch more points, or started shutting down opposition scoring lines, and I just missed it somehow then I'm happy for you (or KRsmith) to prove me wrong with something other than "we watch more games than you". But it sure doesn't seem like he's ready for a promotion to the NHL based on his play up to this point.

Why is it no longer applicable? He still isn't producing much offensively, and he still gets scored on more than anyone else in GR. I agree he's probably better than he was at the beginning of the season, but he's still not good enough to be a 2C in the NHL because he doesn't produce enough offense and he gets scored on a lot. I stand by it. It's still a valid assessment of his game, even if it's marginally less true than it was a few months ago.

That was never the question. The original question asked was "Do you think he's ready for the NHL". And I said no, he's not. Meaning the 2C spot on the Red Wings. That's what I was responding too. Nobody said he wasn't going to make the NHL someday. I said he's not good enough to do so without being a liability right now because he's got a lot of growing to do.

The bold also makes no sense, and is therefore a perfect example of KRsmith logic. Cholo needs to "get rid of the puck quicker" so he doesn't "rush". Lol.

Sounds like you're agreeing with everything I said, because my only point was that he's not ready to play in the NHL because he has deficiencies in his game. So we're on the same page.

The short answer? No. Veleno is abysmal defensively at the AHL level and needs to round out that part of his game. He's getting TORCHED at 5on5. Plus his offense is only middling. About half of his 7 goals are either junk goals or else situations where someone else did the heavy lifting and Veleno simply finished off the play. Offensively he's no better than fellow AHL rookie Chase Pearson, who's scoring about as much in significantly fewer minutes.

Those rankings could change because we got worse, or because other bottom feeder teams got better.

I dunno man, I just think the team was equally as bad (or close to it) as it was a year ago with largely the same personnel. Lose a Nyquist, Vanek or De La Rose, add a Fabbri, Zadina, Filppula, and Perlini. Lose a Jensen, add a Nemeth. These are all basically marginal changes. Maybe that's the reason why Larkin's production is way down but that doesn't seem obvious to me because these aren't huge differences. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I presume both of these guys are just stop gaps for GR. Presumably they're both better than whomever would be called up from Toledo. But you're right, if Yzerman doesn't move out some NHL players then Ras and Veleno don't get called up and there is not a spot (or need) for Stormwall and Handemark.

Understood, but if all of that is responsible for depressing production then it should be having the same effect on Mantha, Bertuzzi, Fabbri, etc. but those guys are producing better than a year ago so I'm not sure why "this team sucks" is driving down Larkin's numbers but other guys are performing better. And just to be clear, I've already stated that I'm not sure whether Larkin is the 60 point guy he looks like this year, or the 75 point guy he looked like a year ago. So this isn't some attempt to bash Larkin. I think his ceiling is still very much up for debate.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet/hockey/a/MRk1jK/nara-att-komma-overens-med-klassiska-nhl-klubben Translates to "...close to signing with classic NHL club", meaning Detroit. Another depth move. I think Yzerman is planning to bring up everyone after the deadline, which means lots of trades/waivers coming up.

You criticized me saying: "Typical Kip avoids responding to an entire post...". The "big and strong" comment was in the post I was supposed to be responding to in it's entirety, according to your logic. If I don't actually need to respond to the entire post, as you're now indicating, then I'm confused about your "typical Kip..." post. So you're mad that I didn't respond to your entire post, even though a portion of that post was directed at CRL? Ok man.

AA, Vanek, Filppula don't matter because none of them played with Larkin anway. Matter of fact, Nyquist doesn't really either because while he DID play with Larkin, Dylan produced more after Nyquist was traded. Your point about Mantha is valid, but misleading since he'll end up with about the same amount of games if he doesn't miss anymore for the remainder of the season. I'd also argue that Bertuzzi is better than he was a year ago too. But my overall point is that Larkin is not playing with worse players this year compared to last, so his production dive can't be explained by his linemates.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...I don't need to respond to every insane thing this guy says. Particularly when he makes things up. For instance, I never said Rasmussen was better than Veleno because he's "big and strong' as KRsmith indicated in his post. So I feel no need to respond to that point. Who's saying it on twitter?

Larkin had the same lack of talent around him last year and he played well. Actually I think you could argue there's more forward talent on the team this year than last. Lack of top end talent around him may explain why his numbers aren't as good as other top centers on other teams, but it doesn't explain why his numbers have plummeted relative to his play last season.

Link to rumor source? Where are you hearing this?

You're not getting "attacked" so quit acting like a p*ssy. You're on a hockey discussion board, you made a statement based on pretty flimsy evidence, and you got called on it. Stop posting if you don't like people disagreeing with you, or better yet, grow up.

Nobody said that. I don't think anyone, including CRL, thinks that a 10 pick is "assured" or "guaranteed" to be better than anyone else. But that's true for the 1st overall as well. There are no guarantees. Busts happen. It's a probability based evaluation. If you looked at all the 10th overall picks, in all the various pro sports leagues over the years, and compared them to the 30th overall picks the group of higher drafted players will generally have performed better. Of course there are exceptions, but they're rare. Suggesting that draft rankings aren't an indication of talent because David Pastrnak turned out better than Nick Ritchie (for example) is dumb. Because why stop there? Pavel Datsyuk is better than Vincent Lecavalier, but anybody who thinks the 171st pick is even close to as likely to succeed as the 1st overall is delusional. The real question then becomes, is there reason to think Veleno and Rasmussen are the exceptions and not the rule? Anyone who says "yes" better have some pretty compelling evidence to think so. Instead, based on all the information available to this point you'd be dumb to bet on it because Rasmussen has consistently been the better player. And it's that difference in ability, track record, and upside, that made Rasmussen the 10th overall and Veleno the 30th overall.

I think the jury is still out on Larkin being a 1C. I don't think we know what player Dylan Larkin is. Is he the guy who scored 73 points last year against top competition and was a stud 200 ft. player? Or is he all that but likely to score around 60 pts.?