ChristopherReevesLegs

If we have to sacrifice one to the alter of the hockey gods in order to ensure the 1st overall, who goes? Names were selected by the discord panel. If you're not in the discord too bad for you.

You agree with me... but it's still flawed? Yes I am thoroughly confused I have HUNDREDS of fancy stats that prove Larkin is really a 3C. But I'm not going to bother to explain them to you. Go look it up yourself. Correct. If you don't wanna present evidence to prove your point then you don't have an argument. You have a statement you can't back up. "iXG says so" isn't evidence. No one of significance. I'd be tanking this sucker. Having a hard time reading again? I highlighted the crucial point for you to make it easier: *yawn* more strawmen Larkin and Nielsen play on different lines and have different sets of expectations? Whoa u just rocked my world... It's your assertion that he's so concentrated on D he can't play offense. I think that's pretty retarded. It's your assertion that he's so concentrated on D he can't play offense. I think that's pretty retarded. So when Bertuzzi and Larkin are in the O zone Bertuzzi is playing offense but Larkin is focused on defense? Why is Larkin doing this? He should be focusing on offensive responsibility in the O zone. With a friendly wager. I'll take the position that he doesn't score 70 pts next season. What do you wanna do if he gets injured? A push until he plays full 82 games?

Then why are you telling me it's flawed bc of 3rd and 4th line forwards on the list??? I literally filtered them out for you. Sure, but I've never forwarded this argument. You'll have to remind me what these are and how they're measured. I gave up on fancy stats years ago. Again... present them. One would think if there exists such numerous and sound stats that prove me wrong you would have presented one by now. I'm open to hearing a run down of Larkin's fancy stats if they are so good. I've never argued that Larkin won't continue to develop. Don't get ahead of yourself. Would I go forward with him as 1C and captain? Not if I had the choice. Sure. Opponents have to make the decision who to put their best matchup on: Tavares or Matthews. Lets say they choose Tavares. Tavares doesn't suddenly have an easier go of things because Matthews happens to exist on the 2nd line. The only way Tavares gets an easier go of things is if the opponent instead chooses Matthews to matchup against. Likewise Larkin is never going to have an easier go of things until Detroit adds an equal or better center to the roster and opponents choose to matchup against that center instead of Larkin. Doesn't matter if Jason Williams is our 2C or RNH is our 2C... Larkin is always going to get the toughest match-up until he's supplanted at 1C. Nielsen struggled this season. It happens. We can't write him off. Would you make this same argument? It's the same logic. I'm not here to defend Nielsen, I just like to see the same standards applied to all players. Nielsen should have been our 3C this year and dropped the ball. Likewise we needed Larkin to be our leader and 1C and he dropped the ball through the entire beginning of the season. That's not even remotely close to what I just wrote. Read it again: Ah you mean when a new coach implemented an entirely different defensive and offensive scheme? Blashill didn't change his systems this year and deployed Larkin exactly the same as last year. Again, if Larkin is thinking about D when he's in the O zone then he needs to get his head checked. How come that didn't affect Bertuzzi or Mantha? C'mon now. You said mark it. Why can't you back it up if you're so confident? We'll both still be here in 1 year.

Also says we officially released Malmstrom and Elfstrom. Retained Kadeykin.

Lol the stat isn't flawed, you just don't understand how to interpret it. Scoring per 60 is a measure of productiveness while on the ice. Brian Boyle can score on every single 4th line shift he takes and rank #1 in scoring per 60. That doesn't mean he's better than Dylan Larkin. Which is why I filtered out 3rd, 4th, and 2nd line centers for you, but go ahead and ignore that I guess... It's a measure of how effective a player is offensively in their given position. If Brian Boyle has a very high scoring per 60 from the 4th line, that's an indicator he needs to be promoted to the 3rd line. Dylan Larkin's scoring per 60 is on the low end for a 1st line center, this year and averaged over the last 3. Which indicates in an ideal situation he would be demoted to the 2nd line where he's more effective per shift. Simple as that brother. I'm sorry, I'm not a math freak, please explain what in the heck iCF and ixG are. Did I not just rank Larkin as the 24th best 1st line center productively over the last 3 seasons? It seems corsica took a very long way to get to the same conclusion as me, or 23rd at least. Where do they rank him this season in a vacuum? Your link 404's btw Opposing teams are always gonna to try to "shut down" our best line. Doesn't matter if our 2nd line is great, good, mediocre, or poor. Sure we might win more with more scoring help from the 2nd line, but that doesn't make Larkin's 1st line magically play better. Now if you want to suggest that opponents are going to instead send their best matchup guys out against a different line than Larkin's, all that means is that Larkin is no longer on the best line. Exactly the change I'm advocating for. Nice strawman to avoid the issue. Larkin is allowed to have down seasons, but also Larkin is definitely going to get better. This is in a nutshell the problem I have with fans and young players. Because of perceived potential Larkin is immune to any criticism. We've seen this same scenario play out badly with both Brendan Smith and Petr Mrazek. I point out that these players are getting worse, or at least not getting better as expected, and most fans get mad because I'm not towing the line and looking the other way on them... cause their young and have "potential". I don't think any player deserves this kind of immunity. Larkin is 400 games into his career and he's proving to me he's the not the 1st line center we all hoped he could be. If he wants to be considered more than a 2C or poor mans 1C he needs to prove it with play and production, not make believe future potential. Right now he's trending downward when considering the totality of the season. I'm quite serious. Last I checked the O zone and the D zone are at two different ends of the ice. It's great that Larkin is working on improving his D, but Larkin isn't focused on D in the O zone. If he is we have a much more serious problem. Blashill also did not change his scheme from last year to keep up Larkin up high more often. He handled all the tough matchups last year too. Yet he regressed from a 79 pt pace that year to 61 this year. Pretty dramatic. No other player on the team had such a dramatic drop off. Sticking your head in the sand on this seems wise though. Curious. What do you think changed? What do I win if I take this bet?

Do a flip or it doesn't count Dylan

DK: "This dust is stinging my 30 year old grown man acne" Justin Abdulkadir: سأدمر هذا المبنى بعد بنائه إن شاء الله Miller: "Ryan never helped build a high-rise. Now mom will have to love me more." Glendog: "Luke like football. Football gud." Larkin: "I shidded and fardded"

You've said it's flawed, and done absolutely nothing to point out why it is so. Name them. Explain the logic here Yet he was continuing to enter his prime this year and only got worse, while his line-mates stayed the same or got better. If you're going to continue to use the "muh team bad" excuse to explain this away, you need to address why it affected Larkin so badly, but not Mantha or Bertuzzi and to some extent Fabbri. He's outside the top31 in the same stat if I consider just this season. Hogwash Larkin had 51.5% offensive zone starts this year Last year he has 51.4% offensive zone starts He wasn't deployed any differently than last year Okay, explain to me why it's flawed. You can run any average stat this year. Points per game. Points per 60. Primary assists per 60. Shooting percentage... etc etc. None of them place him in the top31 centers. You could've, and probably did, say the same thing last year. Yet here we are. >He's only going to get better! >Gets worse

Come for the Red Wings. Stay for the s*** posting.

The Michigan Militia there has 13 years of higher education experience between them. They're likely discussing the engineering behind the foundation of the building and whether or not a tube structural system or a trussed system with X-bracing will be best for the build. Larkin on the other hand is practically a NEET who never got farther than algebra 101 and plays mini-sticks in his moms basement, or as he likes to call it "dungeon". It's no wonder he doesn't fit in.

Larkin grew up a Leafs fan /thread

More like the prawns or mayonnaise on the cake That's part of it fersure. But Toronto was also well into a rebuild already and was poised to start coming up the standings. When Babs joined them they already had the Shanahan brain trust going, 4th overall Marner, 5th overall Reilly, 8th overall Nylander, and multiple other young players coming up. Matthews was really the only major piece that came after Babs unless you count free agents and trades. Babs saw a rising ship and jumped off our sinking one. Even if the Toronto job wasn't available I think he would have opted to go somewhere else. He's a career-centric ego-driven opportunist just like Bowman was.

Look at this image. It speaks VOLUMES. DK, Abby, Miller, and Glendog all huddled together sharing stories, jokes, and general team-like camaraderie. Larkin alone. Disengaged. Excluded. Not one of the guys. Staring listlessly into the void. This is the social pariah you guys want to be captain...

That's not my suggestion at all. Those players simply produce more with their ice time than Larkin does. Rocco Grimaldi certainly doesn't have the defensive acumen of Larkin, nor does he face the quality of competition that Larkin does, but he's able to generate more points per 60 from Nashville's 3rd line then Larkin is from Detroit's 1st line. That's indicative of an offensive player in a position which suits him. Nashville is able to squeeze a lot of juice from that orange. I suspect Larkin's sweet spot is 2C. His point totals might drop slightly when moved to this position (or might not at all) but his points per 60 will probably go up dramatically. Of course this requires a legit 1C.

unzip me daddy

*unzips pants*

Good point. I've almost forgotten at this point how truly of an embarrassment we were. No coach should be able to survive that for as long as Blashill has already, let alone come back for another season. Sadly, It likely comes down to what @Barrie said. Why would any decent coach want to come here at this point just to tank their own career?

1. Not sure what your point here is, I'm only going on scoring as well. But I agree, it's 1Cs job to produce. 2. You must not understand?? I'm not projecting anything. I'm basing it on scoring rates in actual games played. If Crosby scores 40 pts in 30 games, and Eric Staal scores 60 pts in 70 games, technically Crosby scored less points as a whole, but he was a much better center when he actually hit the ice. To stay Eric Staal is better than Crosby because Staal played more games would be silly. 3. Again I'm not sure that you understand what I'm doing here. You think Crosby isn't a top31 center anymore because he had to deal with an injury this year? There's a reason I'm adjusting for games and ice time. I want to identify the best players, not the ones with iron man streaks. 4. Ice time doesn't matter? Games played doesn't matter? Again, by that standard Crosby is a 2nd line center, Kadri is a 3rd line center, and Mikko Koivu shouldn't even be on Minny's 4th line. 5. Agreed.

I'm clearly considering Larkin's production. What production variables did I leave out that would break my theory? Since you're likely gonna sperg out and talk about defense no matter what I say about production, how would you like to measure this variable? Please present it. I'll consider any variable if you can present in a meaningful way. Agreed. Extremely tough task. But the rest of the league being better than us isn't an excuse. If the Red Wings have the worst top line in the league that means only one thing: The Red Wings need a new top line. Fair point. Lets explore it. Adjusted for ice time and 5v5 play, and removing any doubles or triples (2nd line and 3rd line centers): Larkin finishes 29th overall this season, ahead of only Anze Kopitar and Tyler Seguin. Pretty much where everyone pins Larkin: barely a 1st line center. I've adjusted for that for you. See above. But that begs the question: Why was he on pace for 79 pts last season, and only 61 this season? His linemates were the same. His deployment was the same. His linemates didn't regress. Points per 60 is much more accurate. If Larkin averages 2 pts per game and plays 25 min a night, and Bertuzzi averages 2 pts per game and plays 15 minutes a night, guess which one is the more productive player? Doing the same thing I did above (adjusting for and removing 2nd and 3rd line centers) for the 2018/19 season; Larkin finishes 26th. Better than his 29th finish this year, but still a borderline 1st line center. See my above two statements where Larkin finishes 29th and 26th. There are no Dowd's or Boyd's on that list. I'm also eliminating players who played less than 30 games. If Larkin is improving yet, why then did he regress this season 300+ games into his career? I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't consider Larkin an "established" NHL player at this point. Larkin is a great defensive player. Unfortunately being good at defense doesn't automatically make one a 1st line center. 1st line centers have to produce in the NHL. I did the math and your right here. Adjusting for scoring per TOI, 5v5, and only considering 1st line centers. Larkin finishes as the 24th most productive center in the NHL over the last 3 seasons averaged. Again, great 2nd line center, poor 1st line center.

When you adjust the Red Wings production for ice time and 5v5 play over the last 3 seasons: 1. Larkin = 2.00 per 60 2. Bertuzzi = 1.99 per 60 3. Mantha = 1.91 per 60 4. Vanek = 1.87 per 60 5. Nyquist = 1.80 per 60 Larkin is barely more productive than Bertuzzi, Mantha and Vanek. Now consider his colleagues around the NHL under the same measures: Nikolaj Ehlers = 2.26 per 60 Dylan Strome = 2.25 per 60 Brendan Gallagher = 2.25 per 60 Reilly Smith = 2.23 per 60 Travis Konecny = 2.22 per 60 Timo Meier = 2.18 per 60 Brett Connolly = 2.12 per 60 Robert Thomas = 2.11 per 60 Domink Kahun = 2.11 per 60 Johnathan Marchessault = 2.10 Phillip Danault = 2.07 per 60 Alex Killorn = 2.06 per 60 Chris Kreider = 2.05 per 60 Cam Atkinson = 2.05 per 60 Tomas Tatar = 2.04 per 60 Rocco Grimaldi = 2.03 per 60 Jaden Schwartz = 2.03 per 60 Craig Smith = 2.01 per 60 Ondrej Kase = 2.01 per 60 Just a few of the "big names" who produce more per minute played than future captain Larkin... Dylan is the modern equivalent of Paul Woods, Danny Gare, Reed Larson, or Dale McCourt. Medicore players and forgettable captains. On any good team they'd all be 2nd line players including Larkin. Think of that next time you beat off into your 71 jersey.

Players probably are tuning him out. I don't blame them. He's an idiot. But Yzerman isn't looking to turn this team around next season. He's looking for his high draft pick. And an idiot coach who's good with kids serves that purpose nicely. Folks who were so adamant about replacing Babcok with Blash. Take the gun out of your mouth. We forgive you.

Adjusting for games/minutes played is cherry picking now? Really? What did I ignore? The silly argument you're only now presenting? Okay Other top centers in the league play against different competition than Larkin does? Seriously, unpack this point. How would you like me to control for quality of competition? Not really, when adjusted for TOI he's a 2nd line center. If there's anyone on the team who can't lean on "with very little support" it's Larkin. He plays with the same line-mates he did last season. He consistently has the best line-mates on the team. Yet he regressed while his line-mates remained stable or continued to grow. Completely talking out of your ass now are we You'd think once I pointed how flawed total points is you'd be smart enough not to quote total points, yet here were are. When adjusted for ice-time Larkin's 2018/19 season comes out as the 51st most productive center. Again, a 2nd line center. What planet did you wake up on this morning? I'm quite literally doing the exact opposite. Why is this an excuse? 1st line centers go up against the best competition. That's not exclusive to Larkin. If Larkin can't score consistently against 1st line competition then that proves only one thing: He's not a 1st line forward. Larkin isn't a rookie anymore. This isn't a "sophomore slump". He has close to 400 NHL games played already, double all his line-mates. Maybe he can be one day, but so far, 400 games in, he's still not an NHL top31 center. He didn't project as a top line center last season

I find myself in an odd situation. I hate Blashill. I never wanted him to replace Babcock. Yet here I am defending him now. Look, the fans wanted to "rebuild" and wanted a "players coach" who can train kids. Well you got it. We're in a full on rebuild with a youth centric coach. You got what you wanted, You don't get to complain now. Stop and think to yourself right now how lucky we are that Yzerman exists. REALLY. Think about it. Any other team and we would be royally f***ed right now. But here we go, we're spoiled wings fans so we get big names right away. Yet Yzerman is gonna need many years to turn over this team cause we're that bad. Larkin is is our best forward and hes a good 2n liner. Don't blame Blashill, we have many years of trying to fix this thing.

I do have a bit of problem with the whole 31st center in scoring thing. First off, you're not adjusting scoring for games played. Guys like Crosby actually fall outside of the top 31 centers, despite us all knowing Crosby is much better player than Larkin. When you adjust for games played Larkin isn't a top line center. Second, when you adjust Larkin's scoring to points per ice-time he falls to about 59-61. Barely a 2nd line center. Thus I suspect when Mackel says Larkin would be a 3rd line center on some teams he's not far from accurate. Third, Hudler was #8 in scoring among all forwards in 2014-15. Do you honestly believe Hudler was a top 10 forward in the league that year? Or was he just a good player who was afforded top minutes with good linemates? This is the flaw with arguing with totality of points. You've all just witnessed an atrocious season from the Red Wings. Mackel and I are here warning you that your beloved players who participated in this atrocious season aren't that good. Choose not to believe us if you like, but don't say we didn't warn you.

I believe this is just the games way of having Zberg and Franzen count against the contract limit without actually playing or affecting the cap.