kipwinger

Much as I hate to say anything positive about Mike "No Event Hockey" Babcock, he basically did this with Anaheim in 2003 when that team rode J.S. Giguere (and trapped their way) to the finals. That team was baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

What a f*cking finish.

But who would take care of the houses you own all over the country?

I’ll keep you in mind in case an “Obnoxious Tw*t” position opens up.

What not to like? Good salary, great benefits, and I don’t have to interact with the public.

You can have him. My pud will always be KRsmith

Sure you have. People are always giving out personal information on the internet. I’m sure you were, as usual, the picture of honesty.

I’ve been here a loooong time and you’ve been a pud the whole time. If you were going to get under my skin it would have happened years ago.

Wait, did you just do “I know you are but what am I?”. Lol In between lying, trolling, and making sock accounts do you ever look in the mirror and realize that you’re a f*cking man baby?

Huuuuuuuge goal!

Yep, I’m sure they’ll use him completely differently than they did last season. That would makes tons of sense.

Yep, you have a friend whose uncle’s brother knows a scout. And you’re a business owner who travels all over Europe. And you’re a national champion athlete. And and and. You’re a liar man. You’ve done it for years. Your credibility is zilch.

The refs are ruining this series. There’s a penalty every 3 minutes. Edit: 11 penalties through two periods. This is unwatchable

While those are both good players, I wouldn't like this draft strategy. We'd still be lacking a competitive forward corps and you're not likely to get impact forwards outside the top of the draft so you're just kicking the can down the road yet again. Another way of putting it would be: If I could only have 4 all-stars on my team I'd rather they be two centers and two defensemen than 4 defensemen or 4 centers. You can compliment star players with good free agents and be ok, but you can't build and entire forward corps (or defense corps) through free agency. Side note, can you believe that the Red Wings have been looking for a quality 2nd line center since signing Stephen Weiss TEN YEARS AGO? It is completely insane to think that we've had a glaring hole in our lineup for a DECADE and every attempt to fill it (not that there were many) has been a half-assed failure. Weiss, Richards, Neilsen, Suter, Copp. Losers.

And Datsyuk was hurt too. But you'll recall it was Pittsburgh's 3rd line that absolutely killed us that series. I think we were icing Hudler-Filppula-Samuelsson and they had Kennedy-Staal-Talbot. That line came up huge for them.

IMO 2005-06 was the worst. He had SOOOO much talent. FOUR 80+ point players. EIGHT 20+ goal scorers. Stars on offense, stars on defense, quality depth goaltending. Leadership. Youth. Everything. Lost in the 1st round to bottom feeder Edmonton. What a f*cking disaster.

Pronman is usually right about which player is going to go in which draft range. But he ALWAYS thinks centers will play on the wing in the NHL and he always grades guys' skating worse than it actually is. I've read his stuff for years and I always know those two things are coming.

At least three, if he's the super coach that everyone said he was. Babs' reputation was entirely built on the Olympics. He was able to win gold with super teams and everyone started conveniently forgetting that when he was given extremely competitive NHL rosters he usually dropped the ball. He has the exact same success rate in the NHL as Peter Laviolette despite the latter never coaching half the talent that Babs did. He's never been as good as his acolytes said he was.

I thought the exact same thing. Every mock they do Wheeler has Detroit taking an undersized winger. Benson, Perrault, Perron. He keeps saying, "Detroit needs offense". Which is true, but not THAT kind. Bultman (being a Wings beat reporter) understands the nuance a little better. Barlow and Nilsson seem more like Yzerman picks but even then I'm skeptical. I just don't seem him walking away without a center at that top pick. They'll put out 10 more if people keep reading them lol

The Athletic's new two-round mock draft is in. Pronman, Wheeler, and Bultman have the Wings taking: 9. Gabe Perrault (Wheeler's pick) 17. Colby Barlow (Bultman's pick) 41. Felix Nilsson (Bultman's pick) 42. Jayden Perron (Wheeler's pick) 43. Eteinne Morin (Pronman's pick)

I think there's probably a difference between being demanding and being a prick right? Like, requiring players to work hard, follow a game plan, don't blow their assignments, etc. and then holding them accountable when they don't do their job might be considered demanding. But I'd be surprised if players thought it was unreasonable. Playing weird mind games with rookies (Marner), arbitrarily benching/scratching established players for marquee games (Chelios, Spezza, Modanao), and verbally belittling players (Franzen) is probably considered unreasonable to most players. Guys wouldn't be in the NHL if they couldn't handle being pushed really hard. But I think most guys have the right to expect their coach not to cross certain lines. FWIW Babcock himself admitted that he steps over the line during an interview he did for the HBO 24/7 series that aired before the Wings/Leafs outdoor game.

I read an article this morning that said teams only have about 100 players that they seriously scout, and don't draft any players outside of that 100 (or so) players. This is mostly because they don't have the resources to accurately scout hundreds of draft eligible players. But also because someone that they've scouted is always available whenever they step to the podium. I'll see if I can find the article.

I do too. You're better off filling your amateur scouting department with guys who have A) good judgement, and B) a track record of successful talent evaluation and then let them do what they're good at (finding players). Aggregated scoring tends to put different variables on equal footing with one another. And when you do this you get bad results. Across almost every single variable a guy like Joe Pavelski is worse than a guy like Alex Semin, but one of them is good and one isn't? Why? Because all characteristics aren't created equal. Why is Patrice Bergeron better than Tyler Seguin? He shouldn't be if you go through the list of traits that scouts evaluate. He's really only better in two ways, he's smarter and more competitive. But that makes him better overall. Modern hockey analytics does this same thing (treats all skills equally) and over the years I've become very skeptical of analytics for this reason. Look at possession metrics (which are based on shot attempts). You might have two guys on a line that backcheck, win board battles, fight through checks in transition, and gain the offensive zone. Another guy does none of that but shoots any chance he get (Think Brett Hull or low rent versions like Mikael Samuelsson or Teemu Pullkkinen). At the end of the shift they all get the same possession score, but the cumulative effort it took to generate that shot isn't shared equally. The first two guys did A LOT to contribute to the success of that shift. The latter guy did one thing. Who's better? Now, who should you draft? Depends on what you need.

I don't agree, but not because I find fault with the theory you're proposing per se. It's because there I don't think there's any good way of determining who the "best" player is. For a bunch of reasons. First, you shouldn't really care who the best player is on the day you draft them. You should care who the best player is going to be. If you took the "best" player in the draft each year most of them would be 2nd year eligible players since they tend to dominate 1st year eligibles both physically and statistically. But NHL teams don't take those players often. Why? Because even though they're the best now, they probably won't be long term. Second, You can easily determine who the fastest, strongest, most accurate shooter, etc. But that doesn't denote the "best" player. Not even close. In fact, it's that kind of thinking that made Ken Holland (along with every other talent evaluator) think that Filip Zadina was the BPA and not Quinn Hughes right? You can score players across a bunch of variables and aggregate them, but often a player with a singular skill (or two) that's far and above his peers becomes the better player. Quinn Hughes is a better player than Zadina because Zadina is a little better than his peers in several ways, and Hughes is WAY better than his peers in one or two ways. But that makes him more effective. Third, every team weights different characteristics differently. Why would Yzerman tell his scouting staff (as he did) that he wanted to focus on drafting the most competitive players (at the expense of skill) if the Wings' scouting department could reasonably figure out who the "best player" is without emphasizing competitiveness? Some teams might prefer the inverse too (value skill over compete). It's no secret that managements draft players based on how well they fit with a team's "identity" and style of play. You think a team that values transitional play is going to draft a player that's bad in transition but good at everything else? Probably not before that draft a slightly less skilled player who excels in transition. Remember when Yzerman said he likes big defenseman and then drafted a million big defensemen? If the BPA was the BPA regardless of what the manager wants then it would be EXTREMELY unlikely that the BPA every time Yzerman steps to the podium to select a defenseman just happens to be really big and athletic right? Matter of fact, the only time the Yzerman used a pick on a sub 6ft. defender was Johansson and that was because Hakan Andersson was "pounding the table for him", not because he was the next best guy on their draft board (they've admitted this publicly). SY: I want big, mobile, defensemen. KD: Sorry Steve, we've crunched the numbers and it looks like the BPA is slow, 5'9 midget defenseman Lane Hutson so that's who you're taking. SY: You're right Kris, my hands are tied.

I did read the article. It says the Wings are interested in bringing him back. His name is in the headline. The very first sentence of the article says " The Detroit Red Wings would like to re-sign forwards Pius Suter and Alex Chiasson". They can prefer a two-way deal all they want, it doesn't change their interest. Tons and tons of guys have played for the Red Wings over the years on two-way deals.