kipwinger

I'm never quite sure when you're being a smartass or not, but I do think there's something to this. It's been proven over and over that players reach their peak production at a pretty early age. But most teams don't win Championships until their top guys are a little older. So you score more when you're 24, but you win more when you're 28 (more or less). I think a big part of that is learning how to win. And part of THAT is learning what you're willing to do to win that Cup. Because once you get to the playoffs every single team is good. You're not going to skate circles around playoff teams like you did during the regular season. The difference between winning and losing in the playoffs might be whether you're willing to lay down and block a shot on the PK, or bust your ass on a backcheck, or get run through the end boards by a forechecker to get the puck out of the defensive zone for a change. In other words, gumption. We didn't win in 2008 because we had the best players. We won in 2008 because Henrik Zetterberg would rather die than get scored on during a 5on3.

I think there's an argument to be made that having super duper stars like TO or EDM have inhibits the ability to add that kind of depth. Or at the very least, if you're going to pay more than one guys 10+ million dollars you'd better hope they don't all play the same position.

I think he's a center all day long. He's too good defensively and in the FO circle not to be used there. He's also one of the younger players in the draft so I still expect a lot of physical development in addition to his skill development. I think he's going to fall down to where Detroit is drafting because he's super young and playing in a tough men's league so his number's aren't as good as some of the popular Canadian and American kids. But against his own age group he's absolutely dominant and has been for years. He checks a ton of boxes for the Wings. Big, center, well rounded, high offensive ceiling, goal scorer, developed in Swedish men's league. If he can add some speed I think he's got really high offensive upside in the NHL. Edit: The flip side of the coin is that if you want a center who has all that AND speed you might as well draft Brayden Yager.

I will lose my f*cking marbles if we draft Reinbacher.

I think he’s taking a center. If he doesn’t move up he will take one of Moore, Yager, Danielson, or Dvoraky with the 9th pick. I’m coming around in Dvoraky a lot. I didn’t realize how young that guy was. IMO all the knocks on him can largely be explained by the fact that he was playing in a men’s league when he was 16/17. His game reminds me a lot of Sean Monahan. I'd be giving him a long look at 9OA

To be honest I forgot he was hurt. But he's day to day which is about as healthy as you're going to be in the NHL playoffs.

Totally. Barely any NHL teams need top four, right shot, point producing, defensemen. I can't believe he's not in Europe already.

They were absolutely NOT right about Hronek. They absolutely sh*t all over that guy for years and then (surprise surprise) when he wasn't completely saddled with losers like Marc Staal and Danny Dekeyser he had a career year. What a surprise!

Those guys are SUCH puds. Their takes are hilariously bad, and they are routinely proven wrong, but that doesn't stop them from doing it all over again the very next episode. Their boy Prashanth Iyer does the same s***. Some highlights: -Filip Zadina is a "dominant" top six forward with an elite shot. -Filip Zadina is better than Robbi Fabbri -Michael Rasmussen isn't even an NHL caliber player. -Seider was a a bad pick -Edvinsson was a bad pick -Kasper was a bad pick -Hronek is average at best and a liability at worst -(and my favorite) Brenden Smith really is "that damn good". Anybody with even a shred of intellectual honesty would spend a little time trying to figure out why they're so consistently wrong. It's always refreshing when you see re-drafts or (better yet) articles devoted to figuring out analytical blind spots. Not these guys. They're on to the next bad take. I wish I was in a business where I could take my professional legitimacy on a really bad take, fail miserably in my predictions, and then never have to answer for why I'm so wrong so much of the time.

They're still in really good shape. They split 1-1 on the road and are heading home for two with a healthy roster. They could very easily take the next two.

Huge opportunity for Johansson (and to a lesser extent McIsaac and Wallinder) coming out of camp.

I try to distinguish between "flashy" and "effective" in my mind when thinking about a guy's ceiling. Fans and hockey media types always conflate the two. To me having a high "ceiling" just means that you'll be very effective, it doesn't say anything about HOW you'll be effective. Without significant increases in pace and physicality it's hard for me to imagine Sodorblom being especially effective in the NHL in a top of the lineup role. To me he's a 3rd line scoring winger and powerplay specialist right now. Without significant increases in pace and physicality I just don't see him making an impact at 5on5. So I think his ceiling is higher than a guy like Zadina (bad at everything) but probably lower than a guy like Fabbri (a little above average at everything). Unless he makes huge strides in his skating in particular I don't see him being as good as Rasmussen even because you'll have to shelter him half the time.

This was pretty close to my list. I limited mine to 5 players and had Sodorblom instead of Lombardi (lower ceiling but more likely to reach it IMO). I also switched Johansson and Wallinder. The way I see it you've got an almost surefire top six winger in Mazur, a top four dman in Wallinder, a surefire bottom six winger in Hanas, a bottom pair dman in Johansson, and a middle six winger in Sodorblom. All with a fair to excellent chance of hitting their ceiling. That's pretty freakin' good for non-first round picks.

Out of curiosity, how could everyone rank our top non-first round prospects in terms of their ceiling and their likelihood to reach it? Obviously you don't need to list guys that are way down the depth chart (sorry Seth Barton) but who do you think has the highest upside AND is most likely to reach it? Just throw a few names out. I'm curious what the perception of our non-first round picks is amongst fans.

I saw a post online earlier that said if you take away powerplay goals from both Boston and Florida, then the Panthers absolutely dominated the Bruins at 5on5. This is be interesting because it's more or less the same story with Toronto and Tampa. Tampa carried the play at even strength but Toronto's special teams won them the series (well that and injuring Tampa's entire defense corps and 1C).

You're barking up the wrong tree. But nice try.

Trolla la la la lala la la

I think you genuinely need that many games to statistically differentiate between good and bad teams in the cap era. Think about how different the playoff picture would have looked this year if there were only 50 games (for example). For starters, Florida would not have made the playoffs and Washington and Pittsburgh likely would have (woof!). Because of the cap, the talent level is so even that you genuinely need 82 games to figure it out now. Not so much in 1986...or 2002. But I think it's a better product because of that. If you're a fan of Detroit, or Buffalo, or Winnipeg, or Florida, or Calgary your team was playing meaningful and exciting games into March and April. In the old days you'd have been watching spring training baseball by that point. In short, I think there are more meaningful games now than there have been in decades. Maybe not a perfect system, but a really entertaining one for fans across the league.

I think the NHL should be more like the NBA. I'd prefer to know who's going to win a championship before any games are even played. That's WAY more fun as a fan.

NHL Fans: Man, these upsets are crazy! Playoff hockey is wild as f*ck! Woooo Hooooo! Also NHL Fans: Bettman's forced parity is ruining the sport.

Might want to do a little research. Dylan Larkin scored more this year than any of those three did the year St. Louis won the Cup. Perron scored more this year than Schenn did the year they won the Cup. If those guys are capable of winning a Cup (and they did) than so are ours.

4 of the 5 top lines you just mentioned have never even played in a conference final. One hasn’t left the first round. And you’re being disingenuous. Even the most generous forecast of the Wings doesn’t have us winning a Cup for another 3-5 years, at which point Larkin will likely be a 2C, Raymond will be WAY better than he already is, and Perron will be retired. The reality is that you have no idea what our lines will look like or how good our young guys will be in that timeframe. It’s WAY too early to tell. For example, If SY trades up for Will Smith and Kasper turns out to be as good as Kadri your prognosis is immediately invalid. That’s literally all it would take. Two very realistic events happen and your take is irrelevant. Also, none of us has a very good track record with prospect predictions anyway. You included. So why are you so sure that Raymond, Kasper, Mazur, Berggren, Sodorblom, Lombardi, etc. won’t be any good? We are the same people that hated the Seider and Edvinsson picks. The same people that thought Mantha was a stud and Zadina was a sniper and Cossa was a bust. Things change DRAMATICALLY with young players, even year to year, but you’re absolutely sure that none of our guys are top line players? On a scale of “Zadina is going to be awesome” to “Tyler Bertuzzi was picked a round too early” how sure are you?

I'm saying it's pessimistic because to prove your point you've taken the bleakest view of nearly every current Red Wings and romanticized all the older guys. In some cases laughably so. For instance, Raymond=Hudler? C'mon man? Hudler was in his Draft +7 season before he scored as well as Lucas Raymond did as a 19 yo rookie. If Raymond isn't significantly better in another 5 years then maybe you'll have a point, but for right now he's WAY ahead of Jiri Hudler. This is generally the problem with all these predictions, half the guys on the list aren't even close to being done developing. Edvinsson is only as good as Kronwall? How can you conclude that? He's played literally 9 games in the NHL and is MILES ahead of where Kronwall was at the same age. You've also left off half of our best prospects. Kasper, Berggren, Mazur, Wallinder all project as top six/top four guys and you've conveniently ignored them. Another problem with the above is that you seem to be suggesting that there's some blueprint for winning teams and we just don't have the pieces. But that's misleading. The Bruins don't currently have any players as good as Datsyuk, Lidstrom, or even Zetterberg. Bergeron doesn't have the offense that either Datsyuk or Zetterberg had and they've got NOTHING like Lidstrom or Rafalski at the top of the defense. But they keep winning anyway. The 2019 Blues had maybe ONE player that would have cracked the top end of Detroit's 2008 lineup (Tarasenko), yet somehow they managed to ice a winner. The LAK won two cups with a team that was across the board worse than what we had in 2008. More rings though. Meanwhile, I probably don't have to remind you how many Cups Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares, Reilly, McDavid, and Draisaitl have. Hell, how many playoff rounds have those guys won? Yet nearly all of those guys would have been at the top end of our 2008 team. Finally, (and I've already stated this elsewhere) In at least two, maybe even three, of the last five years we've gotten the best or second best player in the draft irrespective of whether we won a lottery or not. We've taken the best guys we could take, developed them well, and they're improving the team. But it takes time. Drafting Bedard would help sure, but so will any number of other players we may take this year and next. None of Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Lidstrom, Rafalski, Hudler, Filppula, Franzen or most of the other players on the 2008 team were taken in the first round. Almost all of them had long development to become top players. In terms of team building the 2008 Wings were assembled MUCH more like the current Wings than the current Avs, Oilers, or Leafs. The problem that fans (including you apparently) seem to have is that you want to skip the line. You want to draft a bunch of top end guys and then be good a few years later and it doesn't work like that. Victor Hedman and Steven Stamkos (the highest drafted players on the current Lightening) were almost 30 before Tampa was a contender. It takes time, even when you do everything right. And we didn't do everything right. We basically wasted 1st and 2nd round picks at the end of the Holland era. Yzerman basically started from scratch four years ago. You can't turn a franchise around in four years even if you hit on almost every pick (and Yzerman mostly has). Give it a second.

This is a pretty pessimistic take, but I imagine that was the point. Rather than debate with you over all the things I disagree with I'll focus on the part I do. It is important to figure out how to get young guys onto the roster as soon as they ready (too soon and you'll screw up their development), and to do that SY needs to ensure that roster spots are not being taken up by veterans on longer term deals. So ideally you wouldn't want to see him targeting too many more guys like Copp, Maatta, Chiarot, Perron, etc. However, I'd caution that getting younger isn't really the panacea that some think it is. It takes a really long time for players to reach their ceilings AND for teams to come together. There are no Cup teams full of 25 year olds for a reason. Similarly, despite the fact that players tend to do most of their scoring when they're young, they tend to do most of their winning as they get older. We need to make sure there are spots for guys like Wallinder, Sodorblom, Mazur, etc. as soon as they're ready to play the minutes but with the full understanding that it takes every young player (even really good ones) a LONG time how to be great NHL players.

LA looked really bad last night, but I generally thought they looked like the better team up to that point. You're right, they were super tentative last night but in games 3 and 4 they were super aggressive, fast, and skilled. They defended well too, obviously. My main complaint with their game is their carelessness with the puck. They turn it over A LOT. I'm also a HUGE fan of Arvidsson and Fiala. I'm really hoping that Raymond and Berggren can continue to develop into those type offensive wingers. Watching them play really exposes how slow the Red Wings are. In theory both teams are built on strong defense and opportunistic scoring. But LA is SO much faster, both with respect to their personnel as well as their systems. When they get possession of the puck they're on the counter attack really fast and are always pushing the pace in transition. Detroit has a similar emphasis on defense but because our team is slow as sh*t Lalonde prefers they regroup and move up as a five man unit and it really hampers the few skill guys we have (Larkin excepted).