kipwinger

I have every intention of watching him play. In the AHL. Regardless of how he looks in this tourney, half (or more) of each roster is filled out by undrafted scrubs. And looking good against them if you're a top player (or even a Chase Pearson) isn't that impressive to me. Again, Seider may end up being as good as you're all suggesting. But the Traverse City Tourney isn't likely to convince me of that.

Skepticism, not cynicism. In general though, I think regardless of the level of competition it's clearly better to be performing well at these things than not doing well. So there's reason for optimism. If Seider, or Veleno, or Pearson, or whomever continue this in the AHL then I'll start taking notice. Right now it's all potential for me though.

Didn't see it. But in a game where Chase Pearson scores a hat trick my guess is that the level of competition isn't great. Seider might very well turn in to a cornerstone defender, as you've suggested. I'm just not likely to be convinced of that by a solid showing in the Red Wings prospect tournament.

I like your enthusiasm guy, but you might want to hold off on those kinds of pronouncements. If he scores 12 points and gets torched by AHL level competition I suspect you'll be singing a very different tune.

Lol. If there were moderators around here I wouldn't be having this conversation with you.

Don't make me a party to your incoherent "ideas" you f*cking martian. I agree with none of what you said here, and I suspect I don't agree with any other aspect of your existence either.

At one point no less a student of the game than Mike Babcock believed Darren Helm was the "best 3rd line center in hockey". I'll reserve judgement on Joe Veleno until he actually does something impressive against quality competition. The road to NHL stardom is littered with guys who everybody just knew "will be really good", but who couldn't hack it.

The trouble with projecting either of Veleno or Rasmussen a few years from now is that we're all really susceptible to recency bias. A year ago people thought Zadina was making the big club out of camp too. One year, and a "meh" AHL season later, and people have a totally different perception of things. If Veleno struggles against AHL competition things change. If he breaks into the NHL and dominates on the wing, a la AA, then things change. If Ras starts in the AHL and dominates as a center, things change. In theory I obviously agree that our centers don't have to be elite offensively if our collect group of wingers are. I made that point to begin with. But as I've been saying since before the draft, center is our weakest positional groups right now and a lot is up in the air. We have one quality NHL center and one quality center prospect. That's it. So determining the strength of our center group in 2 or 3 years, with or without a Brayden Schenn is pretty tough.

That would depend entirely on how well Joe Veleno turns out. But yeah, in theory that could be really good. Though, if Veleno turns into a solid 2C then you could still draft a winger, like you're talking about, and put Rasmussen at 3C. I'd still really like that top 9 in theory.

Nice, thanks.

How'd you find replays of the games to watch?

Totally agree about the goaltending. It's a bit of a truism to say that you need a hot goaltender to win the Cup, but it's hard to build around that. In fact, it's one of those rare situations where having the "best" goaltender hardly ensures you'll have "good" playoff goaltending. Consider that NONE of Luongo, Lundqvist, or Price have a Cup. Also totally agree that a group you can "build around" is a better situation than a few "elite" guys. But that's where I think positional strength matters. For instance, say you've got a couple workhorse centers but they're guys who don't score a ton relative to their peers. No problem if you collective group of wingers do score more than their peers. I don't think we need Super high scoring (80-100 point centers). Another 70 pts. guy will do as long as he's an assist machine. Because I think ALL of our top 6 wingers (and maybe one of our 3rd liners too) are going to score 20-30 goals. In this thought experiment lets use a Claude Giroux type. A top 9 of Larkin, Giroux, Veleno, Mantha, Bert, AA, Zadina, Ras/Berggren/Mastrosime/Svech, probably brutalizes opposition defenses without a single "elite" talent. Same with the defense. I think they need to collectively be able to put up points, without the need for any one player to be an offensive stud. A couple 30 point guys paired with a couple 40 point guys are a really good top four as long as they can defend competently.

I don't disagree in theory, I just think "elite" comes in a lot of different formats these days. Probably not a single St. Louis Blues player would be considered top 5 at their position prior to their win. Maybe Tarasenko. In contrast I think Tampa had elite players at every position and they got crushed. I realize that recency bias but nevetheless the point is interesting. Anymore I think you need good players, obviously, but you need depth and a good match between the players and the coaching systems. By which I mean that you need 4 lines and 3 pairs that won't get absolutely torched if they get caught out against an opponent's top line for half a shift, and you need those players to be able to execute a coach's system (and especially special teams systems) to a high degree.

Very possible. Likely in fact. That bottom pair of Ericsson/Daly/Bowey is going to be a nightmare though. Hard to imagine they won't get scored on constantly. You'd have to think Yzerman would want to remedy that as soon as possible. Then again, any or all of Daly/Ericsson/Green are likely to be injured coming out of training camp.

I agree that Yzerman is not likely going to feel beholden to the vets. But I also know he probably doesn't want the team getting scored on constantly. And while Ericsson and Daly definitely suck, in general veterans are more committed defensive players that young guys. Especially young "offensive" defensemen. I can see Cholo getting the nod despite his defensive game needing work. I just can't see him being paired with someone who is also bad defensively (Kaski, Bowey). Or maybe the latter two are better than I think and it's not an issue.

Yeah, I'm happy with our defense. I was before this year's draft and I obviously still am. Forking out a bunch of assets for a defenseman at this point seems silly. It's no longer an organizational weakness going forward. I think everybody is just used to the old "our defense sucks" refrain so they keep thinking we need to address it. We already have. We just need centers in next year's draft. Preferably ones that have high offensive upsides. We've got two workhorse guys (Larkin, Veleno). Would be nice to have a guy that could kill teams offensively a la Backstrom, Giroux, Aho.

You're chasing your tail a bit here. The guy is demonstrably only sorta effective when he's playing with the best center on earth. And even then he only scored 14 points in like 400 minutes with McDavid. So for him to be better than that on our team we'd have to A) win the draft lottery (which is hard even if you're the worst team in the league), and B) draft a center as good/better than McDavid (there are none). Trading for the guy just doesn't make sense. Sorry man. You can try to rationalize your preference all you want. Svech scores at basically the same rate, from our 4th line, without needed McDavid to drag him up and down the ice.

So you have to figure Cholowski is the leading candidate to get Kronwall's spot on the left side of the defense. Wonder who his partner will be. Conventional wisdom would have it that you'd pair him with a righty, but our remaining righties are Bowey and Kaski. Either of those two with Cholo is a recipe for getting scored on. So looks like one of Daly or Ericsson still draws in? DK-Green Nemeth-Hronek Cholo-Daly/Ericsson?

You're also MASSIVELY overpaying for the guy. He's a good player, but he's not that good. Reminds me a lot of young Keith Yandle. He's very good offensively, and feisty, but he's cheats for offense a lot and is a bit of an adventure in the d-zone. There's a reason Seth Jones is the workhorse for the BJs. In the very near future I think Hronek will be providing all of the same qualities as Werenski does without needing to give up half our team to get him.

Wait, so you want to trade for Puljujarvi with the expectation that it will pay off if we somehow manage to draft Lafreniere? Ok man.

Well we don't have a Wayne Gretzky or a Connor McDavid. So guys that are heavily dependent on playing with centers like that wouldn't do very well here.

Then there's this, from an article in the Athletic referencing Puljujarvi. "We’ve covered this road before, but Puljujarvi’s ideal spot is on the right wing with Connor McDavid as his centre. In three seasons with Edmonton, Puljujarvi has played 407 minutes and 44 seconds at five-on-five with McDavid, scoring 6-8-14 for 2.06 points per 60. That’s a better number than Alex Chiasson had with McDavid (1.48 per 60 in 284 minutes) and better than Zack Kassian (1.96 per 60 in 428 minutes) one year ago. Despite the results, Puljujarvi’s (almost) 408 minutes at five-on-five with McDavid during his entry deal represent 25 percent of his playing time. Puljujarvi has produced just 17 points in over 1,600 minutes away from McDavid. That’s 0.63 points per 60 at five-on-five away from the captain. Puljujarvi’s possession numbers with McDavid also shine like a diamond: During his entry years, Puljujarvi with McDavid owns a 55 percent possession rate (Corsi-for) five-on-five via Natural Stat Trick. Without McDavid, his Corsi-for five-on-five as an Oilers player is 47.9 percent."

I just want to reiterate that I think Svech is still an unknown, not that he's somehow definitely better than Puljujarvi. As such, I'd rather see what we have in him before we trade him. Why do I think he's an unknown? Three years ago he played two games in the NHL and looked lost, but he tore up the AHL. Then two years ago he had a down year for most of the season in the AHL, but got called up at the end of the season for 14 games. The first 6 of those games he was a non-factor. Then he scored 4 points in his last 8 games and earned a little more ice time each game. Then finally, going into last year he started out the pre-season looking pretty good, scoring 2g and 1a in 5 games, and looked very much like he'd make the team. Then he blew out his knee and the rest is history. Again, I realize it's a small sample size including a pre-season. But there's enough there for me to want to see if what else he's got. Whereas with Puljujarvi I see a guy who's been given ample opportunity and squandered it, with Svech I see a guy who may be a productive player with that same opportunity. I could be wrong, but that's my rationale. You've made your point man. We all get that you don't think Zadina is going to be all that good. Maybe not. But bringing it up at every opportunity isn't contributing in any way to the discussion.

A guy who scored 9 points in 46 games last year, and then had two hip surgeries, is worth a 3rd round pick. Yes. And that's precisely why Ken Holland isn't in a rush to trade him.

This particular rebuttal cuts the deepest. You win.