kipwinger

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Kasper and Edvinsson in for the Red Wings tonight, Wallinder and Mazur playing for GR today. F*ckin' A.

I really like the Edvinsson-Chiarot defense pair. For whatever reason they seem to play well together despite it making no sense whatsoever. More generally, I'm a huge fan of what SY did bringing in Chiarot, Copp, Maatta, Husso, and Walman to go along with Larkin as the leadership group that's meant to guide the young core of Seider, Edvinsson, Raymond, Berggren, Ras, Cossa, Kasper, etc. into contention. They're veterans, they plan the right way, they all work their butts off, and none of them are breaking the bank for what they bring to the table.

Three point night for Carter Mazur in his fourth AHL game. That brings him up to four points in four games. Is that good? I can't really tell if that's good or not.

I do like our team. It's just not lost on me how much better all our young guys are going to get. Think about how much better Larkin is now than when he was a 1st or 2nd year player. He's WAY better. Now apply that same principle to Ras, Berggren, Seider, Edvinsson, Raymond, Mazur, Kasper, Cossa, Lombardi, Wallinder, Sodorblom. This team is going to be awesome, they've just got to age into it.

Lolonde already said it's nothing that will affect him long term and that he'll be able to have a (nearly) full summer of training before camp. Nothing to worry about.

Any word on how Ben Chiarot is responsible for breaking a rookie's kneecap?

Shutting him down was the right call, even if the injury hadn't been so serious. He's way too young, and the stakes are way too low right now, for him to be playing through injuries like this.

We clearly see him very differently. I was just thinking the other day that he works his ass off defensively. He's a solid forechecker and he's always hustling and pestering puck carriers on the back check. He's not Dylan Larkin or anything but he does take his defensive assignments seriously and works at it IMO.

In a way it's almost a weird vote of confidence because it's like "Hey, we know you'll get scoring chances even if we put you with total puds". Sucks for him though.

Berggren is on a line with Luff and Czarnik tonight. What else does that guy have to do to play with talented players?

I don't agree that they're our "best players". They're our players with the most potential. There's a difference. Kasper, for instance, wasn't even the best center on his SHL team. That would be Adam Tambellini by a pretty sizeable margin. That dude never even made the NHL, not a single game, and he was MUCH better than Kasper this year. Similarly, for most of the year Edvinsson wasn't even close to the best defender for the Griffins. He was heavily sheltered until he started to figure his game out. If you want the best players to play, and not the players with the most upside, then you're going to be stuck with the Oesterles/Ernes/Haggs of the world for a bit while your young guys are young and improving. Seider, and to a lesser extent Raymond, are the exceptions and not the rule.

Edvinsson was pretty raw during training camp. He was turning the puck over A LOT and wasn't defending well. I suppose you could make the argument that he could have learned to manage those parts of his game in the NHL but I tend to agree that the NHL is not for development. In the video I posted in the other thread Edvinsson said himself that the jump from Europe to the AHL was much bigger than from the AHL to the NHL.

Look at this horse. He's an absolute monster. Way thicker than he looks in his gear. This is probably my favorite interview all season. Edvinsson straight up shrugs off mentions of Nathan MacKinnon and Matthew Tkachuk like they're not sh*t and then very matter of factly threatens to beat the hell out of everyone in the league when Daniella and Art mention he knows MMA.

Stylistically Kasper reminds me most of noted sh*t stirrer Ryan Kesler. Big, fast, strong, in-your-face , good around the net, two way center.

For what it's worth, I saw in an interview with Villi Husso that he plans to spend the offseason in Detroit. Not sure if that's the plan for other guys or not. I'd definitely like to see all of our young guns (Raymond, Kasper, Mazur, Wallinder, and Edvinsson) on the Michael Rasmussen training plan though. Raymond especially needs work in the size AND speed department. The rest of those guys just need to fill out.

He's already really really hard for forwards to beat. His defense is already so good and he's a super heads up passer. Reminds me a lot of Ryan Suter at a young age. Probably not gonna score a ton of goals, but will have 40 assists per season (or whatever) and be an absolute rock defensively. During that scrum with all the young guys and Bunting I was thinking to myself "I can't wait until our guys fill out" because you can just see we've got a bunch of workhorses who still have teenager bodies. When Edvinsson is 6'6 and 225-230 lbs and strong he's never going to lose a puck battle.

I agree that Kasper looked fine. He definitely looked like a kid who just got thrown into the deep end (which he was) but he kept up and didn't look overwhelmed. I obviously really liked him kicking off the scrum that got Bunting ejected. I really like this approach with Kasper. Give him a few games to see how hard and how fast the NHL is and then give him an entire offseason to work on things before camp. He'll be ready. As far as Edvinsson goes, he can't play more than 8 games or else he'll burn a year on his entry level deal but the team has already said they're not going to cross that threshold.

Magnus Hellberg is absolute trash.

It makes total sense to scratch him. I mean, why give fans something to get excited about late in a losing season when you could just...not do that?

Aaaaand Kasper is a healthy scratch tonight.

Lalonde does baffling things with the lineup sometimes. Kubalik and Larkin play very well together, have since the beginning of the season and still do. Whenever Kubalik is playing with Larkin he finds the scoresheet. So naturally you'd only play them together when every other player on the team is hurt. Same with Hronek and Maatta. That pair clearly worked, so it only makes sense that you'd break them up for 2/3 of the season.

If he's in the lineup tonight you'd have to imagine he'd be on the wing somewhere. The Perron-Larkin-Kubalik line is clicking right now so maybe he fits with Copp and Raymond? Either way, I like breaking him in on the wing because it should allow him to absolutely murder a few defensemen on the forecheck (which he's already quite good at). I'm pumped about this game.

The way I see it we need a center, a power winger, and a right handed defenseman. I'd look to target the forwards with the earlier picks and the defenseman with the later picks. I like Smith/Moore/Yager/Danielson (in that order) with the first pick, Barlow/Ziemmer/Stramel with the second pick, and Dragecevic/Brzustewicz/Willander with one of our 2nd rounders.

Wallinder is going to be an absolute unit. I was watching a bunch of his tape last night and I'm a believer now. I've come full circle on him, always thought his offense wasn't good enough but I was wrong about him. All of these guys (Seider, Raymond, Edvinsson, Mazur, Kasper, Wallinder) need to fill out, but once they do the pure athleticism on our team (to go with Larkin, Walman, Ras) is going to be crazy hard to deal with.