Dabura

Injury-prone; missed at least 30 games in each of the past three seasons. And he's just not an Yzerman-type defenseman (e.g. Trouba).

We don't - and almost certainly won't - have any generational talent. I've long since accepted that. It is what it is. My thing is this: If we're gonna do the win-by-committee approach...and we're eyeing the playoffs...and we don't have a particularly deep team (the kind of team that can do the win-by-committee thing)...then we need to load up on really good talent from outside the system. That'll make us competitive now, and foster a winning culture for the young guns, and keep pressure off said young guns. The key is...you have to actually do it. You have to lean into it. If you half-ass a win-by-committee approach, the team will suck and everyone's time and money is wasted. You always need to be on the ball. There's no "Well, maybe we take a step back this year, but it'd be worth it in the long run, because we have some good-not-great prospects coming in four years." That's dumb. I get frustrated when I feel like Yzerman's taking his foot off the gas in that regard. I know that sounds like I'm just an instant gratification junkie (guilty as charged, I suppose), but it really is more than that. I really don't think treading water is an option, if win-by-committee is the model. If we had two Raymonds and two Seiders and a 2C who's better than Compher, that'd be one thing. But, well, we don't. Tarasenko's a good add. If we add a really good defenseman, I'm happy. Fingers crossed.

The rebuild is in a bad, bad place right now.

Me getting excited about the rebuild every few months:

Yes, Elliotte Friedman just confirmed. Wow!

Dare we dream?????

Well, yeah. I heard MBN banged Corey Perry's mom. All he does is win. It's incredible.

The HYPE! rises.

https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/619176/michael-brandsegg-nygard

I don't wanna HYPE! this kid up TOO much and I know I'm really banging this drum here...but it's wild how much hate I'm seeing for this pick. And 99% of it's because we didn't take Eiserman. Maybe Eiserman's the better prospect. Maybe he's gonna be the better player. I don't know. No one does. What I do know is there's risk with players like Eiserman. He was available at 15 because lots of other people passed on him. And they passed on him because of the risk. I actually don't feel like finding pure scorers is a huge concern for us. Larkin scores. Raymond just put up 72 points. There's always trades and free agents. We pulled Kane out of our ass and he scored at a point-per-game clip. I think players like the player MBN has the potential to be are arguably harder to find and arguably more valuable than the player Eiserman could be. Like I said a few posts back, it's rare to find a two-way power forward with a lethal shot. How many of those can you even name off the top of your head? So in that sense, I kinda feel like MBN is a bigger "swing for the fences" pick than Eiserman would've been. I'm not one of those "TRUST THE YZERPLAN" bros. They annoy me. I just think most of the people complaining about this pick haven't actually researched the player. Because, again, he's pretty much the player they want.

Compher but with Sprong's shot.

Need

Imagine being upset with this pick lol https://dobberprospects.com/player/michael-brandsegg-nygard/

Having Kane AND Stamkos would be pure unadulterated chaos on so many levels. The final scores of all our games would be, like, 10-9. It'd be antithetical to everything Yzerman and Lalonde have preached (re: needing to improve defensively), but it'd be so much fun lol

It's rare that a hard-nosed, 200-pound, 200-foot player can shoot the puck like this kid can. It's exciting because a hard-nosed, 200-pound, 200-foot player should have no problem putting himself in a position to score. Usually it's "He can shoot, but he's soft, so he isn't getting to the prime scoring areas" or "He lives in the prime scoring areas, but he's a grinder, so he can't convert."