kipwinger

I wasn't trying to suggest there was some great "Datsyuk vs. Bergeron" debate amongst NHL fans or anything like that. I was just saying that Datsyuk's defensive prowess was noteworthy because he was also an elite offensive performer. Bergeron is not elite offensively, so he just always seemed like a better than average shutdown center. Like Jordan Staal with a little more offense. But in some NHL circles he's talked about like he's a superstar, which I don't get.

I promise I'm not trying to be a troll when I say this, but why is Bergeron so highly thought of? It's not like he's Datsyuk, winning Selke trophies while putting up 90 pts. And it's not like he won a bunch of championships or anything. If anything, Boston underperformed as much as exceeded expectations. I get that he's good, and a class act, and tough as nails, and all that. But is he as good as he's hyped up in some circles? Or is he Jonathan Toews without the rings? What am I missing?

100%, and I don't think enough is made of the fact that having top six centers that score 70-90 pts and play excellent defense is a better situation than having someone that scores 100+ that gets shut down and/or can't stop other (marginally less talented) opposing forwards. Yzerman is building a powerhouse, the right way, and I think we're only a year or two of development away from seeing that strategy bear fruit.

Compher is going to help this team a ton, but defensively as you've pointed out. His defensive metrics are exceptional. He can matchup against top lines and find success, which should help Larkin and Copp's lines significantly. The last two years Larkin has scored nearly a point per game despite being keyed on every single game (perhaps more than any other player in the league). Imagine how he'll score if he gets even a 10-15% decrease in quality of competition? Outside of Larkin our best defensive center last year was Suter (woof!). Compher is a great get, and he's going to be huge for us.

Boston is cooked. They've lost too much already this offseason and their best remaining players are due for regression in the coming years.

I don't think they've got better players than we do, they're just a couple years older. We're a similarly talented team now, and most of our best players are still on the way. All of their best young players are already on the roster. They've got nothing coming, we've got Edvinsson, Kasper, Danielson, ASP, Mazur, Cossa, Sodorblom, Lombardi, and Wallinder coming. They've got one of the worst prospect pools in the league. They've got four or five guys on their NHL roster right now that are pretty good (Stutzle, Norris, Chychrun, Chabot, Tkachuk, and Batherson) and they only finished ahead of us because we didn't have Bertuzzi, Vrana, and Fabbri on the roster for most of the season last year. That's it. Get average seasons out of those three players last year and we finish ahead of them. Also, we got substantially better in the offseason, they didn't. Bert is more or less equal to Dcat in production, but Compher is WAY better than Suter as a 3C, Kostin is a better winger than Zadina, Sprong is more or less equal to Kubalik, Reimer is better than Ned/Hellberg, Holl is better than Oesterle/Hagg/Lindstrom.

Am I the only one who doesn't think Ottawa is ahead of us? They finished three wins ahead of us despite us having horrendous injury luck all season long. You go down their roster (and organizational depth chart) and we're just as good as they are. They beat us up in those two games, but that shouldn't be misunderstood as being further along. We're going to smash that team this year AND probably Buffalo too. Best news is that most of our best young players aren't even on the roster yet, theirs are and they still only barely finished ahead of an injury plagued Detroit team.

Geez take it easy. I didn’t think it was too much to ask you to name a few podcasts you listened to enough to let them inform your opinion in this way.

Which podcasts?

Videos in which Pronman bashes the Seider pick, as you’ve insinuated.

Link some for me to watch?

Here's what Pronman said of the Seider draft when he did his "Draft Grades" article immediately following the 2019 Draft. Doesn't really seem like he's saying it's "bad" given the B grade, the fact that he thought Seider would be a top four defenseman, and that he explicitly says "I like Moritz Seider". Seems like he wasn't sure of the upside. But think what you want I guess. Detroit Red Wings: B Detroit had an interesting draft. They got talent. The debate over the next few years is did they get the right talent. I like Moritz Seider a lot, just not at No. 6. I like Antti Tuomisto, just not at No. 35. For what it’s worth, Detroit wasn’t the only team high on both those players, even if it wasn’t a consensus opinion. They had a lot of day two picks, as has been the case the past few years, and they added a lot to their farm system. I think Seider will be a quality top-four defenseman, Robert Mastrosimone and Albin Grewe play, Tuomisto has a good chance to play, and several other picks are on the radar. For the assets they had, was it enough, though? I have some skepticism, but time will tell. This is one of the most fascinating team classes of the past few years.

Agreed. But you didn't really answer the question. If you think someone is going 13th and they go 6th does that count (in your mind) as being badly wrong?

Pronman mock drafted Seider going 13th. He went 6th. Does that count as "badly wrong"?

Yep, sure did. He’s right, I’m wrong.

McIsaac's contract is two-way. He doesn't need to be waived to be sent down.

Where did Pronman say he "never bothered to scout" Seider? I'm genuinely unfamiliar with that piece of info. According to this article (by Pronman) it sure seems like he scouted him. "Moritz Seider, RHD, Detroit Seider was a unique evaluation in 2019. He played in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL), not a league many were used to contextualizing top-10 picks in at the time. His club in Mannheim was very strong, and he didn’t receive a ton of ice time or power-play opportunity. You still saw this huge, mobile, competitive defenseman with some puck game and it was clear he was a very good prospect. Whether he had the offensive upside to be a true top-end prospect was the question for myself and a lot of NHL scouts. I rated him as a mid-first-rounder. There probably wasn’t the evidence at the time to support what he’s done offensively since then, but there was evidence to suggest he was going to be an excellent two-way defenseman. Seider went to the U20 B pool that winter and was the clear best defenseman, helping elevate Germany to the A pool. Even that, while impressive, is not usually indicative of an elite prospect. His world championship was different. He showed up for Germany versus some of the best players in the world and didn’t look like a fish out of water. It was around that time I started to hear from NHL scouts that this player was for real, and it was here that I erred in not valuing how good he looked for a U18 defenseman at arguably the second-highest level behind the NHL. I don’t think I would with that information have moved him up to a top-five range as he’d go now in a redraft, but he should have been rated as a very reasonable top-10 pick." https://theathletic.com/2952636/2021/11/16/pronman-nhl-prospects-i-was-wrong-about-the-2021-22-edition/

I understand being critical of sports/hockey media in general, but I don't really understand the specific criticism of Pronman. He's no oracle, but he personally scouts hundreds of players all over the world year after year. People gush over Bob McKenzie and Craig Button and they don't do that. They're not freezing their asses off watching s***ty U18 games in Czechia or whatever. Pronman does. Does that mean he's always right? No. But it does mean that his takes are his own, and they're the product of his own personal evaluation process. What's that worth (you might ask)? Well, he did get Seider wrong (as did pretty much everyone else). But he's the ONLY person that got the Slafkovsky/Shane Wright draft correct and that was a HUGE take that nobody else was even close on. Pronman predicted (Slafkovsky, Jiricek, Cooley, and Wright) and the actual draft was nearly identical (swap Jiricek for the other top RHD Simon Nemec). That's quite a take to stake your professional reputation on. IMO Pronman is better than most talent evaluators because he puts the work in. Quite a few others with similar (or higher) reputations don't do the work he does. I'm much more critical of guys like Wheeler, Button, or Chris Peters (FloHockey) who are very wrong, year after year, without any of the successes that Pronman has had.

I thought that Lethemon was just sorta getting an "atta boy" for stepping up and helping out the organization last season when our goaltenders were all hurt or underperforming? I really didn't get the impression that the organization saw any potential in him.

Totally agree. I see Kasper as a Ryan Kesler type of center. Matchup guy that scores 50-70 pts. I think Danielson will in the 80-90 point range while still playing good defense (more like Larkin).

I genuinely think N8 will have better offense than Kasper. And I love Kasper. You do a search on his name in the LGW archives and you’ll see I was the first guy to pump his tires. But as much as I love him I think N8 scores more. His shot and handles are better and he’s just as good in transition. They’re both going to be insanely useful when we win a Cup (which I’m fully expecting now that our cupboards are full with absolute studs) but I think Danielson will be the offensive guy and Kasper will be the matchup guy.

Wheeler has been low on him all year. His stupidity is well documented. He had Andrew Cristall in his top 15. He has a clear bias toward small wingers with tons of flash. I guarantee Danielson outperforms quite a few guys Wheeler was really high on (Perreault, Benson, Cristall, Sale, Yager). TL;DR: Scott Wheeler is a total hack.

Been doing as deep a dive as I can on Nate Danielson the last few nights and I'm SO pumped about this guy. I think he's going to be an absolute stud. There's nothing that this guy doesn't do well. His skating, stick handling, and shot are all noticeable. His playmaking is good, maybe not elite, but it's hard to say if that's because his wingers completely suck. When he fills out he's going to be a horse. I think the range of outcomes for him is somewhere between Jordan Staal (on the low end) and Alexsander Barkov on the high end.

An underrated part of Yzerman's tenure as GM has been his cap management. By keeping contracts low and short he's been able to sit on a ton of cap space, which he has routinely used to acquire (and flip) players for draft picks and better players. He made something out of nothing in a way that would have baffled Ken Holland.

This guy sucked in his draft year and he sucks now. If he had the EXACT same career up to this point, but was drafted in the late first round (instead of early) nobody would give a single sh*t about him and he'd be working at his dad's used car dealership in Winnipeg right now.