kipwinger

Awww s***...It's an ab off! Also, why is dieting and exercising a function of you being "psycho"? Aren't you just, like, supposed to do that stuff?

I love how "I wouldn't be surprised" has become your new way to straddle the fence. Why not put your money where your mouth is and commit to something? Yes or no, do you think Zadina will be the better player?

Me: Why would Arizona need Hall to help make the playoffs when they probably will anyway? NyquistIsDURRRRFuture: I DURRDN'T REALIZE PLAYOFFS SPOTS WERE GUARANTEEEEEEEEEEED IN DECEMBER *mouthbreathing*!!!!!!!! Me: I mean, check the standings, they're already doing pretty good without him. DURRRQUISTISMYFAHDURR: OH YEAH, DA BIG BAD COYOTES WON DURR CUP ALREADY IN DECEMBER HUH!?!?! Me: Nah dude, they're just probably going to make the playoffs so that doesn't seem like why they traded for Hall. DERPQUISTDERPFUTTTER: I'M DUN WIT DIS, VIKTURY IS MINE!!! ... ... ... F.Michael: Aliens Bruh!

You realize that even if you took the top 8 teams in the entire league, not just each conference, the Coyotes would still be tied for a playoff spot. Not trying to get your goat here man, but the "they did it to get into the playoffs" explaination for the Hall trade is just missing the mark.

I'm looking at the standings that have the Coyotes comfortably in the playoffs. You know, the official league standings. Which standings are you looking at?

I agree with the first part, just not the second part. Trading for a star player and former MVP is always going to excite the fans no matter who trades for the player. But the Yotes are tied for 3rd in the Western Conference and will comfortably make the playoffs even without Hall.

Yeah, probably time for a new narrative. If the team hasn't "folded" in the 23 years it's been around previous to now, I'm guessing that's probably not the reason they traded for Hall.

Save the franchise? From what?

I'm confused, you said we should take "BPA" and that we need "elite" talent. There's an elite goalie who's likely to be the BPA when we pick, so we should take him right? Or are you suggesting that Askarov could be the BPA and we shouldn't take him anyway because of his position? Because that sounds a lot like what I'm advocating with Byfield. Also, there's no reason to think Lafreniere is anything more than your average top of the draft player. The same things you're saying about Lafreniere now were said by others, more knowledgeable than you, about guys like Dahlin. They were wrong, and are wrong, routinely when they do this. Ray Ferraro, for instance, said of Dahlin, “The kid is a prodigy, He’s the Auston Matthews or Connor McDavid of defensemen if we can compare him to the last couple of drafts.” Just a quick google search will provide reems and reems of such comments. So when you say, Lafreniere is "on a different level" I don't know upon what rational basis you've made that conclusion.

You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You say that we should take the best, most special, player we can get but have routinely balked at the idea of picking the Russian goalie Askarov despite the fact that pretty much everyone agrees he's "special" and WAY better than his peers. So if we should take the best player, because we need elite talent, then if we don't get Lafreniere we should draft Askarov right? Dude, Dahlin was literally called the "greatest defensive prospect EVER" and the "Connor McDavid of Defensemen". You're downplaying it now to win debate points. He was HYPED! to the f"cking moon.

I'm not talking about the #10 pick. Given our current trajectory we'll pick no worse than 4th. And in the context of the Lafreniere vs. Byfield discussion we're talking about 1-2 overall. For all intents and purposes the #1 pick is not a "safer" pick than the #2 or #3 picks. If there's a difference in likelihood of playing in the NHL between top five picks, it's probably minuscule. Using a previous example, it's not like Svechnikov was a riskier pick than Dahlin because he wasn't the consensus #1 guy, or even Zadina or Tkachuk. They were all always going to be NHLers. And speaking of Dahlin... Any scouting which concluded (as they all did) that there was a giant rift between him and Quinn Hughes was not only wrong about Dahlin, but was also wrong about Hughes given how things have played out so far. Even if they end up having similarly brilliant careers the scouting would have been wrong because NOBODY thought that was possible. And if all that's true, then why would anybody have any faith in these scouting reports the next time they say someone is WAY better than someone else? In recent memory only McDavid and Matthews were top ranked prospects who turned into obviously better players than the next few guys after them. Otherwise it's usually not that clear cut, which wouldn't be a big deal except that all year long everyone makes it out to be clear cut. I wish I had a dollar for every person who said Leon Draisaitl wasn't in the same tier as Aaron Ekblad, or Quinn Hughes wasn't in the same tier as Dahlin. And it's not like these are guys that came out of left field. They're brilliant hockey players who nevertheless were not on the same plane as the top guy because the top guy is the top guy.

Using your rationale I could just say, "I think he's close to Lafreniere because everything I've seen or read has him as the next best ranked prospect". Then add the fact that he's younger and plays a harder position with more responsibility and he might even be closer than that. But that's not the point I've been making for two pages now. The point I'm making is that despite the fact that Byfield isn't better than Lafreniere now (which is empirically true) he is probably a better pick for Detroit because he fills a need, and may turn out to be the better player at this peak.

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.