kipwinger

So if you haven't watched a ton of Lafreniere, and you're skeptical of media narratives, how do you know he's going to be "really special"?

That's where you keeping missing my point. I don't think you shouldn't be excited about a prospect of Dahlin, or Hughes, or Lafreniere's caliber. I'm saying that there are MORE prospects of that same caliber in just about every draft, you just don't see it because your opinion of the top guys is a product of their frontrunner status and not the other way around. Again, if Byfield (for example) was 10 months older (as Lafreniere is) then we're probably not even having this discussion. As far as the "chess vs. checkers" or "X-factor" thing from your last post, I basically think this is another form of confirmation bias that tons of people have. They think flashier guys are better by default. If Jack Hughes has an X-factor it sure isn't helping him too much right now. Larionov is a Hall of Famer with an X-factor, but he wasn't much (or any) better than any of his less skilled hall of fame peers. Datsyuk had the "it" factor over Zetterberg but they had nearly identical PPG rates for most of their careers until Zetterberg blew out his back. Hell, Filip Zadina is a much more dynamic offensive player than Brady Tkachuk but it doesn't seem to be making any difference on the score sheet. I think the thing that fans get wrong (myself included) is that we tend to look at drafting as a sort of comparison between junior level players at a moment in time (draft day) when the reality is that how good you are on draft day matters way less than how good you'll be at your peak. Who cares who the best player is right now? It's about who's going to have the better career, and to figure that out you have to factor in things like age, league, genetics, position, etc., and once you do that you might realize that someone who's a hair behind now may end up being WAY more valuable later.

I'd be thrilled if we drafted Lafreniere. But given the choice between him and the center who's basically just as good I'd take the center, because we need a center more. More boring and surface level than jumping aboard every consensus #1 pick's hype train? I mean, saying Dahlin, or Hughes, or Lafreniere should be a team's top choice isn't exactly a hot take man.

Well, asking anybody to be a 100 point two-way workhorse is asking a lot. But yeah, I had the same concerns about the DEL after drafting Seider and he's proving me wrong on that pretty hard right now. I think the impressive thing with Stutzle is how well he's performing in a men's league for such a young guy. He's still only 17 and he's tied for 9th in league scoring.

Definitely. But that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that you, and a handful of other people on LGW, get positively moist about every consensus #1 pick every draft year and act like nobody is even close to their skill level. And then two years down the line, when history shows that they weren't the absolute beasts you made them out to be you've conveniently moved on. Remember when everybody around here was drooling endlessly over Dahlin? Remember how he was the best defensive prospect in modern history? I do. EVERYBODY just knew he was on a different level and we'd never seen anything like him right? And then Quinn Hughes and Cale Maker turned out to be better at the same stages of their careers. Nobody talked about those two guys the same way, what happened? I have a theory. Rasmus Dahlin was never that much better, or better at all, than other top of the draft defenders. Neither was Jack Hughes. And neither is Alexis Lafreniere. Why does this matter? Because when people drone on about BPA it assumes that there IS a BPA. And that the differences between players is obvious. The reality is the differences at the top of the draft are pretty small and even consensus #1 picks are routinely outperformed by guys that nobody ever discusses in the same way. So if you choice is between player A and player B (assuming both are highly regarded top picks) you should look at your depth chart and fill holes.

Yeah, but you have a history of drinking the koolaid with prospects a bit. A year ago you were saying the same stuff about Jack Hughes, how "he's playing chess and everyone else is playing checkers" and how he was generational and Kakko just wasn't on that level. Now Hughes has 12 points in 27 games (Kakko has 14 in 29 BTW) and looks very much like a good young player, but not necessarily something special relative to other top-of-the-draft players as you insinuated then, and are now about Lafreniere. Seems pretty clear that he'll be a very good player, but that maybe you buy in the hype a bit too much. My point was not anything related to center vs. wing in a vacuum. My point was that our NHL caliber centers are trash while our NHL caliber wingers are pretty good. We have two center prospects that both have question marks about their offense. I don't see a team winning if Dylan Larkin is it's most offensively capable center and there's no reason to believe that Veleno or Ras has a higher offensive ceiling. If I genuinely thought that Lafreniere was THAT much better than Byfield maybe I wouldn't care, but I tend to believe that if Byfield were 10 months older (i.e. same age as Lafreniere) he'd be mauling the CHL too.

I'm cool with it if he projects as a center long term. He clearly has the offense.

You're on crack. Lafeniere is clearly a top two pick, but like Hughes a year ago, we're not talking about a Crosby, McDavid, Ovechkin level talent here. The player I've heard him compared to the most is Mikko Rantanen. That guy's a legitimate stud, but he's not generational. Byfield is playing at a similarly great but not generational pace, despite being almost a full year younger, and playing the harder position. Sticking with the Colorado comparison, Byfield is scoring at about the same rate MacKinnon did in his draft year at center. I'd rather have a MacKinnon type center than almost any winger in the league TBH.

I'm not sure Lafeniere IS the BPA. Basically he and Byfield are a toss up and we clearly don't need wingers. But given how hard it is to land either of the top spots it's useless to plan for those guys. And because of that, drafting for position becomes more relevant because (as is typically the case) the next handful of guys are usually all roughly as good as one another. Secondly, I definitely don't think Larkin, Veleno, Ras is good enough offensively. Of the three, Larkin probably has the most offensive upside and he's a LONG way from being a consistent offensive threat. And I think his real value is as a Zetterberg type guy that you can throw out against elite players and drive them absolutely nuts, rather than a Dats that's going to drive your offense each night (obviously role comparisons, not skill comparisons).

So, if this season has taught us nothing else it's that our center depth is a back breaker. I think the emergence of Hronek and solid showing by Seider, along with other quality pieces like DK, Cholo, and a reasonably good prospect pool puts our defensive depth ahead of our center depth. We have so much untapped potential on the wings with Mantha, Bert, AA, Fabbri, Zadina, Hirose, Svech, and higher end prospects in Berggren and Mastrosimone, but nobody to get them the puck. Down the middle we've got nobody with offensive punch. Larkin is probably more suited to be a workhorse two-way center good for 60ish points than a top line guy you rely on for consistent offense. And clearly Veleno and Rasmussen don't have that kind of upside at center. Imperative that we find a guy like that. Then move the better of Veleno or Ras to 3C and the other to the wing. I actually really like the thought of Veleno as a Bertuzzi type winger who compliments a scorer.

It's not even that I'm into guys like Rollins, it's just that the charade of "metal" kills me. Originally, when all of Rock and Roll was dominated by drugged-up hippies and British lady boys, bands like The Stooges, and Black Sabbath, and Hawkwind/Motorhead were genuinely more hardcore. The represented a more aggressive approach to rock music...and that became metal. But somehow, some way, that began to change. I think the lyrical content of bands like Iron Maiden is probably the cause. It appealed to pantywaists for whatever reason, and then they started liking metal, to the point where A) they started making it, and B) it started reflecting their values even more. So the aggression of it, which was the whole point originally, diminished while the appearance of hardcore remained. Which is not to say that there haven't been some genuinely hardcore metal bands over the hears. But rather that IMO your average metal band/audience would get demolished by your average redneck sh*tkicker country band/audience. Genuinely tough guys just don't listen to metal anymore because it's no longer for/about them.

Yeah, but authenticity matters. I've seen a ton of "metal" bands, particularly European ones that say all that s*** and have all the faux-metal theatrical crap, and who are all to a man, giant p*ssies. Conversely Henry Rollins, who has never been considered "metal", exists, is hardcore as f***, and doesn't have to talk about dragons, or wear makeup, or whatever to make people think he's a hardcore motherf*cker. He just is. Dorks like Dio ruined metal.

The distinctions between various types of [insert genre here] are completely arbitrary and totally absurd. Ask any metalhead and they'll assure you that a band like the Butthole Surfers or Red Fang are hard rock, not metal. But Tool is metal, but just a much softer more emotive form of it. Motley Crue is hair metal, while AC/DC is hard rock. Motorhead played "rock and roll" and made sure to say so at every single concert they played, and most resemble a punk rock band's sound, but metalheads won't let them go despite their obvious reluctance to embrace the term. All of it is idiotic, because all of it is rock and roll.

Is that you Frieza?

Or maybe he's about to go super saiyan?

Queensryche is The Cult if The Cult A) sucked, and B) was an all chick band.

I know he "fought" Simmonds the other night, but for the last two or three weeks I kept wondering when he was going to punch someone. Maybe he wouldn't have been waived if he'd been more punchy.

How many fights did he have for the Wings again? Edit: Legit, non-rhetorical, question BTW.

Why are we siding with the Axis again? I mean, I get that some of you righties may romanticize the Third Reich and all but my grandpa didn't get his ass shot off in France for nothing bro!

If we plan on sticking to this whole WWII metaphor, wouldn't some American and Russian prospects come along later and kick the living f*ck out of the Nazi? Maybe we should trade high on Seider early, like right before Alamein (his NHL debut in this metaphor), because it'll only be downhill from there?

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I just think it's so easy to find adequate goaltending through trade/ufa that I don't see why you'd ever bother taking one that high. There's always a Murray/Fleury, Holtby/Grubaur, or UFA Lehner out there looking for a home. Build a contender first and some goalie will be dying to play for you when you're ready to go all-in on a Cup.

I'm not sold on the fact that Babs had all that much to do with the two-way play of those two guys. There was a strong two-way culture on the Red Wings before Babs got there. I think he demanded that they play defense, and taught them how he wanted it done in his system, but I think they were already bought in because guys like Yzerman, Lidstrom, Fedorov, etc. were the team leaders when their careers started and they all played that way.

Another argument might be that you don't need elite goaltending to win a Cup so why waste that high of a pick?

He's making a World War II reference. Germans charged (blitzkreig) at the French, who subequently surrendered. Read a goddamn book.

I don't think they're top heavy at all. In fact, they have awesome scoring depth. Outside of the big four forwards, Kapanen, Johnsson, and Hyman all scored 20 goals last year. That's 7 forwards with 20+ goal upside that can be spread out over three lines. Since then they've added Mikheyev, Kerfoot and Spezza. They're SUPER deep offensively. As far as stars playing soft, maybe. But that's not really unusual for young players. People said the same thing about Dats and Z when they were young. Hell, you can look back through old LGW threads and see all sorts of similar complaints about those two in various idiotic trade proposals. Same old story, they play "soft", they're selfish, they don't play defense. Anytime anybody wants some nebulus criticism to bash a player they don't like it's one of those three. Premier talent almost never enters the league playing a fully rounded game. They've never had to. And most of them haven't learned (yet) to play a tough game either. Again, because they've never had to. Then they get a little older, develop more, have more coaching, and become everything everybody says they aren't (a la Crosby). Maybe the three of them will turn out to be Alexander Semin 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. But I doubt it.