kipwinger

It's the ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife! "Some people pull the cello and some people play the cello" - Pavel Datsyuk

Here's my source, I know it's probably not as "accurate" as you'd like but it is the actual NHL website so it should do. If you still think Smith scored more even strength points than any defenseman on the team, I don't know what to tell you. http://www.nhl.com/ice/playerstats.htm?fetchKey=20142DETDADALL&sort=evenStrengthPoints&viewName=points Finally, I notice that you keep ignoring the part of my point where I criticize Corsi stats because they're heavily skewed toward offense but I'll try again. If Corsi numbers truly tell which player is "better", then how do you explain Mike Green having a higher Corsi than Ryan Suter and David Booth having a higher Corsi than John Tavares?

I don't agree that player acquisition is a crap shoot, but I do agree that this isn't a story. Lost in this story is the fact that Columbus had their franchise best season this year and were VERY close to knocking off the heavily favored Pens. People tend to overlook the fact that they're building a pretty good team down in Columbus without Nash, Gaborik, or Carter. I definitely wouldn't have wanted to play them in the playoffs. They're fast, big, hit hard, play defense and have a lot of quality talent. It would have been embarrassing if we'd lost to them, and we probably would have if the truth be known.

I know Williams is the feel good story, and Doughty would have been the "he's probably the best player in the world at his position" story, but Gaborik deserved the Conn Smythe. He was something else in these playoffs.

Kesler has a no trade clause and wants to go to a contender. Ottawa isn't one. I don't think this trade would work EVEN IF Kesler didn't have an NTC considering there's no sense in either team getting rid of a player who doesn't want to be there in order to pick up another player who doesn't want to be there. Neither of these guys requested trades so that they could go play for losers.

Which is why I said they're POTENTIALLY negative. I'm glad you got to the bottom of that mystery. Offersheets almost never work, and when they do it's for marginal talent. Because of this they aren't worth the potentially negative consequences. You keep talking about Weber as if something was accomplished by the offer sheet. All it did was drive up his contract, astronomically overinflate the value of franchise defensemen, and piss off another GM who you will likely have to deal with again one day. Whether Poile immediately responded to Philly is irrelevant. The point is that Nashville was always going to match the offer. Philly was never getting Weber. So why put yourself in a position where negative consequences COULD happen if there's almost zero percent chance the offer sheet will work? Same with Montreal. They'll match any offer on Subban within reason. So the only outcomes are, you get Subban on an unreasonable contract, or you don't get him and potentially have negative things happen (in addition to driving up prices which will ultimately harm you as well). There's no scenario where we get Subban on an offer sheet for a reasonable contract. None. So why do it?

In the last 16 years, it's only been attempted 9 times. That's out of hundreds or thousands of potential RFAs during that period. The offer sheet has been matched in every instance but 1 (Dustin Penner). This includes attempted offer sheets on players of "that caliber" like Kesler, Weber, Vanek, Backes, and Fedorov. Apparently GMs should "strongly consider" something which happens a handful of times for every hundred or thousand RFAs, and only succeeds 1 out of 9 times when it is tried. Definitely a good use of their time. With moves like that we could have a Dustin Penner on our hands in no time. You should send an email to Ken Holland. I'm sure the reason he doesn't ever do it is because he's not aware of what a good idea it is, and not because it's unlikely to work and has many (potentially) negative consequences.

But the same can be said of the initial offer. If we sent an offer sheet for Subban and it was a really good deal, Montreal would match it. If it was a really bad deal, they'd give him to us on a really bad deal or they'd match it and then force us to overpay the same amount by raising the price of our RFAs (slightly) through offer sheets. I don't know why I need to keep making this point. If the logic was so sound then people would do it. Since it rarely happens I'd say there's less utility in it then you're suggesting. Either that or almost every GM in the league (including our own) is a fool who doesn't see something so obvious. I'm not buying it. Well that's one in a row for you. The possibility is what stops it from happening. Surely I don't have to explain how deterrents work.

If you don't understand the points I'm making then I don't know how to be more clear. GMs don't do offer sheets because then other GMs would do the same back to them. There's a reason why every armchair GM thinks it's a good idea and every real GM (aside from the aforementioned Holmgren) doesn't. If we offersheeted Subban, the next couple of years would get REALLY expensive in Detroit.

8 million is only slightly more than what Subban will likely get. Probably about a half million dollars a year more than his market worth. If they offer sheeted Tatar and Dekeyser at 3.5 million and Sheahan at 2.5 million they'd be doing us just as much harm as we'd be doing them by offering Subban 8. Offer sheets are largely useless for this exact reason.

At the trade deadline Detroit and Chicago were on the list as well, but may have been dropped since. The gist then, as now, is that Kesler wants to play for a contender. Not a team that misses the playoffs, like his current team...or Ottawa.

Wouldn't they then have all the incentive in the world to do the same with Tatar, Dekeyser, and Sheahan? They could end up costing us just as much as we'd "cost" them and neither of the teams would have anything to show for it other than a player they were going to sign anyway. Which is why GMs (other than that monkey Paul Holmgren) don't ever do it.

I don't want Spezza on this team, but this plus minus talk is silly. You can't use his -26 this year against him and then fail to give him credit for his career +53. He's got a better career plus minus than Mike Richards, who was a finalist for the Selke Trophy. Either it's a terrible stat and shouldn't be used at all, or it's a good enough stat which has to be used to validate a player just as much as it's used to denigrate them. Personally, I don't think Spezza's a great defensive player. BUT, he's better than his -26 indicated this season, and he's probably worse than his career high +26 indicates as well.

Spezza for Kesler makes no sense considering Kesler has a no trade clause, has listed his 6 teams, and Ottawa isn't one of them.

Mike Green has a higher Corsi than Ryan Suter, is he "better" too? Also, both Dekeyser and Kronwall had more non-powerplay points. Kronwall has 24 five on five points and Dekeyser had 18 five on five and 1 shorthanded point. So that's false too.

Sure he wasn't asking for 2.7 million rubles? That's only about $42.50 in American dollars. Totally worth the risk! But joking aside. Where did you see that he wanted 2.7 million dollars? Because the maximum entry level contract in the NHL is 1,350,000 dollars. So if he was asking for 2.7 he clearly didn't want to play over here at all.

Your entire point earlier was "what if Zetterberg and Ericsson played". You're playing the "what if" game too. I'm just being a little more realistic. Odds are against any of the kids being as good as Datsyuk or Zetterberg. Babcock and Holland have each said so explicitly. So resting our hopes on "the kids" is a recipe for failure. It would probably be a good idea to move SOME of them for established NHL talent while they've still got value. Otherwise we may find that five years from now we've got a bunch of decent talent and nothing to write home about. The two teams in the Cup right now are full of star players that weren't drafted by either team. Mike and Brad Richards, Jeff Carter, Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis, Marian Gaborik, were all traded for and they're playing huge roles for their respective teams. They weren't acquired for peanuts. We've got HUGE amounts of young talent. Would it kill us to move SOME of it for established players?

And the year before that it was "could you imagine if Helm and Dekeyser were playing". There's always some excuse for losing. But the reality is, we're not going to win anything soon if our GM doesn't get aggressive. Maybe 5 years down the road when all our kids are in their primes, provided their primes are even all that great to begin with. What happens if we put all our eggs in the kid basket and it turns out Nyquist only ever gets as good as Filppula, Mantha's the next Primeau, and Smith is Mathieu Schneider 2.0? We'd be f***ed. And given how hard it is to become a star in the NHL, it's much more likely that these things happen than that any of our young guys become star NHL players.

I'd complain. What's the point of signing two guys who aren't going to make you Cup competitive. If you're just planning on treading water until "the kids" develop then you might as well get them into the lineup and let them start developing. I'd rather Mrazek start 25-30 games next year as Jimmy's backup and get professional level coaching than have Nabby for a year. Same with Sproul over Boyle. We're not competing for the Cup either way. At least one of those things helps us in the long term. The other is just more nickel and dime s*** that doesn't amount to anything.

He's not as bad defensively as people make him out to be. But regardless, if you paired him with Ericsson as the 2nd pair and Kronwall and Dekeyser as your shutdown pair you'd be fine defensively and MASSIVELY better offensively. The difference he'd make on our powerplay alone would be worth the cost. But there are other options too. I don't want to make it seem like it's Yandle or bust.

Well of course they "could" win a Cup before Z or D leaves. They just can't do it with a strategy of "lets hope the kids improve faster than the vets decline".

It's tongue in cheek dude, don't take it so seriously. He'll definitely do something major. I imagine he's working up the contracts for Alfredsson, Gustavsson, and Tom Gilbert as we speak.

This is probably exactly what we'll get. But you wouldn't want to overpay. I mean, you gotta keep that cap money because next year...that's when it's all gonna happen. Next year's the year Kenny finally pulls the trigger. Always next year.

I wouldn't want him as our coach, but I'd take him as an assistant. He'd surely help the offense and PP you'd have to think. Not like every player on Pittsburgh's team didn't have about 2,000 powerplay points this year.

I've always been curious about him too, but I recall someone saying that part of the reason he was traded was because Hitchcock didn't like him because he's not committed to two-way hockey. If that's true (and I don't really know if it is) then Babs will hate him too and he'll end up on the fourth line or playing 10 minutes a night and won't be worth a nickel. All depends on his attitude (and/or the validity of the rumors about him) I suppose. But on paper I'd be very interested.