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TheEarthmaster

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Forum: Armchair-GM14 déc. 2023 à 17 h 29
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>yikes</b></div><div><strong>Doesn’t mean GMs think the same as a fan.</strong>

Nor does it benefit the argument of saying “3 goals” when Granlund is not a goal scorer/ Ovi. So you’re really outlining to yourself what needs to be said.

Granlund is not a goal scoring shooter, he brings a totally different skill set. He’s not one dimensional - so his goal total argument that they’re using/ your defending just looks silly now .</div></div>

Therein lies the rub.......the part I've outlined in bold. Which can be used to both support or oppose your arguments. Certainly you've put time into it and kudos for that. However, not being nasty, that one isn't the smartest statement you've made. I could make the same comment about your beliefs about Granlund you see? You're a fan and GMs may not see it the same as you. I'm a fan and GMs may not see it the same as me. Holds no value in a debate other than its basic truth that GMs and fans often don't see things the same.

When we look at comparisons (and I've just glanced over names mentioned through the thread - Bertuzzi I'm not even commenting on as I hate even typing the name or anything even after this length of time and it being the nephew) it's always tricky. Eller was brought in (and overpaid for to my mind) to do a specific job and to me it didn't work out. Others may have a different view but I thought he was pretty much garbage (as was Sturm when the Avs tried him, regardless of being part of the cup winning team, and Brassard sometime earlier). Maybe that's just not having time to develop chemistry and that might be part of why sometimes it's better to make no move at all. BUT the Avs management SPECIFICALLY were looking for someone to do that defensive C job. Tampa specifically went after (and massively overpaid for) Jeannot to be a specific type of player with the upside of only being 24? 25? at the time and hoping his totals would bounce back somewhat. As was pointed out above about Greenway also having the age/untapped potential factor to add in, regardless of how things may have turned out (and hindsight is a very accurate science). There were also elements of team control with those guys. So I think the question is to a great degree, what SPECIFIC role is Granlund going to fill for what team? What you can then get back will depend on how badly that team feels the need to fill that role.

TheEarthmaster also makes a good point about whether the second year would be harmful to his rental value and I guess that is probably more on a 'cap fit'. For example for the Avs I would argue harmful as they are that tight against it so whilst not necessarily reducing how he's valued it would be likely to negate any chance of a trade. Doesn't get more harmful than no deal if you're wanting to move him for assets.

TDL deals (or ones approaching the TDL) are often a gamble and have us as fans shaking our heads (Jeannot even reputedly had other GMs shaking theirs but.....Chiarot anyone?) Even deals like the one for Lehkonen had Avs fans (me included) grumbling at the cost (I'm waiting for the Avs to acquire Monahan for a first and then I will officially quit CF, especially if they go on to win another cup lol). It turned out to be a great move even though more often than not it would appear they don't really pan out. It's why we're armchair GMs not the real thing after all, but from what I've seen over the years no move at all is often the best move. I think sometimes it's a 'Be seen to be doing something' action.

IF I were to put a value on Granlund it's probably a high 2nd to late 1st and maybe a middling prospect you could work with if you're lucky and if he continues to perform as he has been. His overall career will be a factor, his age, term possibly. He's better than some give him credit for but I also don't think he would bring some of the returns you're expecting above but then the teal tint to your glasses can never be totally removed any more than the burgundy one on mine no matter how hard we try to be fair lol. ;)
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 18 h 39
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>TheEarthmaster</b></div><div>Well the Byfield/Brandt thing, that's more or less what the Blues did with Thomas and Kyrou right? The team was good when those guys were coming up after being mediocre-ish when they were drafted. The Blues just couldn't maintain the momentum. Maybe you can blame some of it on the flat cap but you talk about Pietrangelo leaving- like to me that was just the worst offender of a problem the Blues had for awhile, which is that they seemed to stop understanding what made defensemen valuable, and generally acted very reactively.

- You extend Faulk into his mid thirties when he had never played a game while you're trying to re-sign your captain
- Bouwmeester goes down permanently and your only LHD is Vince Dunn so you panic and extend Scandella in his mid thirties based on 10 games while still trying to re-sign your captain
- Pietrangelo leaves so you panic and extend Krug (never mind that Devon Toews was traded three days later)
- Extend Parayko coming off a back injury until he's 37 because you can't fathom another Pietrangelo situation
- Scandella can't hack top four minutes (who would have thought?) so you panic trade for Leddy (giving away a future top pairing defenseman in the process)

Some of these guys are big. Some of them are small. Some of them are offensive. Some of them not so much. Some of them are puck movers, some not. They're all over the place except for one thing- they're old, and they're as expensive as they'll ever be. And in the meantime they hemorrhage younger guys who would go on to play top pairing minutes on other teams, and look pretty good doing it.

I don't mean to relitigate all this but when it comes to Armstrong- I think he's a decent GM, can't deny the ring, but I do think all GMs have a shelf life, and that timeline of mismanagement on the blue line is pretty damming. And frankly, I like Travis Sanheim but that's another guy signed into oblivion Armstrong supposedly tried to trade for. Not exactly indicative of someone learning their lesson to me. He can be a good GM but also, idk, for me maybe it's time.</div></div>

I think the most damning things he’s done is to sign Scandella and Leddy to rather large contracts for what they are after very small sample sizes.

I look at the Sanheim thing as really can be looked at either way. Once it gets to the point of those guys not being top 4s or both being 3rd pair guys. You can live with the cap hit. I’d imagine they’ve explored options to move on from most of the defenseman and probably couldn’t find much. I wouldn’t be opposed to having Parayko and Sanheim locked up reasonably and filling the holes as you go
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 16 h 10
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>TheEarthmaster</b></div><div>Nice work! I'm sure that took a long time lol.

Yeah like I said I'm not totally sold on the Kings as like true cup contenders a big reason for that is a lot of their guys are really good but not great. Like Kempe/Fiala/Danault/Roy/Gavrikov, even Dubois (maybe at a reduced price)- these are important guys that you have at the top of your lineup, but they aren't the ones that are really getting it done for you. Kopitar/Doughty- still very very good but I'm not sure if they're still at that gamebreaking level. And then the young guys might just be a little too green.

I guess I'm also not looking at the Kings as a roster that's been "successfully" rebuilt. Like they're good this year and they've been decent the last couple of years. But since they won the cup in 2014 this is how it's gone:

14-15 missed playoffs
15-16 lost in first round
16-17 missed playoffs
17-18 lost in first round
18-19 missed playoffs
19-20 missed playoffs
20-21 missed playoffs
21-22 lost in first round
22-23 lost in first round

Maybe you cut them some slack for running into the Oilers twice and obviously there's still a wide range of possibilities for their future but I guess I'm not looking at this rebuild, with a lot of depth, a lot of big names but not a lot of game breaking talent anymore, and being like "woah the Kings!". They've done some good work here and there but they wasted a lot of prime years of Kopitar and Doughty without much direction after the 2nd cup win, then they rebuilt (which was necessary) and by necessity, had to burn more prime years, and now they're good but like I said I don't know that they have what it takes to get past some of the bigger guns in the conference.

So if Armstrong wants to emulate the Kings, I kind of would hope he would aim higher and be more aggressive (in one way or another).</div></div>

I took a few things away from this. I think the Kings do still have the culture of winning. Heck Doughty, Kopitar and Quick were some of the faces of those runs they went on. I think this is what pushes them over the edge currently to having them have been extremely successful the past two seasons. I think it's a model that's extremely similar to the Blues model. The outcome is the process of the whole type of situation.

I do agree with you though, I don't really consider them a true top end team. They aren't a Tampa, and barring Byfield ascending to being a true 1C with high end output and Clarke doing the same I don't think they'll get there. But what they do have is an extremely good base that should keep them successful and give them a chance for the next 5, probably 10 years.

I also don't really think the Pacific has been all that great anytime in the recent past. Alot of teams with alot of true issues.

But the good news for them is they have an environment for guys like Byfield and Brandt to be brought into good positions and be the alpha dogs there in the next 2-3 years while winning and doing so. I don't mind Armstrong shooting for this. But I also am not sure it's feasible to avoid the longterm turnaround. One way or another we're going to have to age out the Krug contract, ESPECIALLY if Doug isn't going to play hardball on the NTC.

I'm in a boat that has a pretty large appreciation for Armstrong as the GM and President of Hockey Ops. I think he's very concealed, but also very open and honest about his direction. Has he had some mistakes? For sure. I don't think anyone is going to know what exactly went down with the whole Pietrangelo situation. But that was a major root into the downfall of the roster. Not necessarily just because of the loss of Pietrangelo, but also because of the moves that seemed to be made out of urgency to try and fill the gap.
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 14 h 51
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>TheEarthmaster</b></div><div>I mean this is a problem that stems from the Blues inability to pick a direction and these self imposed rules that Armstrong/Blues ownership is insistent on. If they're going to be bad they should trade Parayko (and Faulk, and Buchnevich, and Binnington, and probably every other good player over 27). If they're going to be good they need to be clearing out their guys that aren't producing and using their TDL haul to improve the team. They did neither, and so now they're like a team that's mostly making hay on Binnington playing well and Jake Neighbours shooting 28%. Might make the playoffs (which, honestly, is probably all they care about for that sweet sweet home game playoff revenue) but you're just banking on Cinderella runs that more often than not fall short anyway, not building a real contender.

And I get that Armstrong checked in on Timo Meier and tried to ship Krug out with one of the 1sts (not convinced that the latter would have necessarily been a good move and also Timo Meier has been terrible this year) but at the end of the day he didn't pull either of those or anything else of note off so...stuck in the middle it is.


Sorry for staking up comments here I came like twenty minutes late to the party.</div></div>

<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>A_K</b></div><div>What is frustrating to me is when Army says he wants to replicate the LA rebuild. Except:
1 - their fading/aging talents (Kopitar, Doughty) are a lot better players than ours (Schenn, Parayko). It's a lesser gamble to count on the mid-30s of elite players.
2 - their draft picks were 5oa, 2oa (4oa before lotto), 8oa when they bottomed out. Does Army think 10oa-25oa-29oa last year was good enough to start the turnaround? If not, why did he build a team to try to get 85-90 pts?
3 - they found Fiala just like we found Buch, but we got Buch too early in the timeline and his impact on the future, rebuilt team is in limbo. Fiala's entire prime will be spent with the rebuilt team.</div></div>

So i did a little bit of brief digging because i was moreso interested in how the Kings exactly went about things because the draft picks the higher ones really have not been a huge factor thus far.

2017-2018 45-29-8 (98 points)
Notable Salaries:
Doughty 11m Thru 25-26 Still Active
Kopitar 10m thru 23-24 Still Active
Quick 5.8m thru 22-23 Traded last deadline
Brown 5.875 thru 21-22 Ran through Expiry
Kovalchuk 6.25 thru 20-21 (Contract Terminated 2019)
Martinez 4m thru 20-21 (Traded 2020 (2 2nd round picks))
Carter 5.275 thru 21-22 (Traded 2021 50% retained on expiring deal for 3rd + 4th)

After this season is when their collapse started equivalent to last season for us. They had made a few small additions in the offseason but nothing big.

2018-2019 31-42-9 (71 points)
extended Walker 2.65 thru 23-24
Maata 3.33 thru 21-22
Kempe 2m x 2
Iafollo 2.425 one year

The following 2 seasons they did largely nothing

2019-2020 29-35-6 (64 points)
No significant adds very similar

2020-2021 (49 points) COVID Year 6th in div
No significant adds very similar

Then this is where they started to be aggressive as there was very limited time on Brown, Maata expiring. Quick couple years left.
2021-2022 (99 points)
Added Danault
Added Arvidsson
added Edler
extended Roy
added Athanasiou
Trevor Moore Bridge
Stetcher minimal contract

Then the next year they added Fiala and that's pretty current to where they stand. Now there was certainly youth that came in to play in this but it wasn't very significant.

Vilardi 54 games 24 points 2020-21, missed most of 21-22, good season last season then traded in PLD trade.
Kalyiev had a pretty minimal contribution in 21-22, .5ppg last season in limited action, this season looks like he's taking another stride.
Byfield hasn't really jumped until this season. Last season wasn't bad.

What can we learn from this?

LAK realized it pretty quickly and started selling - Armstrong did the same this past season with ROR/Barby/Tarasenko

They then went into a holding pattern to let some of the other contracts run out (Brown, Kovalchuk (got lucky here), Carter, Martinez (debatable if it needed to run out wasn't awful), Quick, Kopitar, Doughty). The last two aren't really part of a problem really, just moreso they are running towards the end of their careers so included them.

What do the Blues have in that front that need to run out?
Saad - 3 more at 4.5m
Hayes - 3 more at 3.6m
Schenn - 5 more at 6.5m
Krug - 4 more at 6.5m
Faulk- 4 more at 6.5m
Leddy- 3 more at 4m
Parayko - 7 more at 6.5m
Scandella - Expiring this season not integral.

You can categorize Parayko, and probably Schenn in that moreso Kopitar and Doughty scenario. But they aren't those two. So there's one hurdle to climb. But what is good (Or bad however you view it) is that we essentially already have our Fiala in Kyrou, I would take Thomas' contribution over PLDs as well.

So while we can probably comp to the pieces that LA had we have alot larger of a hill to climb. Meaning I don't really see too well how we are going to start that uptick in year 4 of the retool without additional work (Moving Faulk/Krug). But what is good is the youth injection that we will probably miss out on isn't what turned things around for LA. However, it's highly likely it's going to be what pushes them upwards even more. So do we <em>Need<em> to bottom out? No not necessarily. LA rebounded with mainly young guys who weren't high end talents jumping up and their roles expanding. What worries me is how we're going to navigate adding in supplemental guys - Arvidsson/Iafollo/Danault/ to help push us over the edge if we dont</em></em>
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 13 h 47
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>TheEarthmaster</b></div><div>I mean this is a problem that stems from the Blues inability to pick a direction and these self imposed rules that Armstrong/Blues ownership is insistent on. If they're going to be bad they should trade Parayko (and Faulk, and Buchnevich, and Binnington, and probably every other good player over 27). If they're going to be good they need to be clearing out their guys that aren't producing and using their TDL haul to improve the team. They did neither, and so now they're like a team that's mostly making hay on Binnington playing well and Jake Neighbours shooting 28%. Might make the playoffs (which, honestly, is probably all they care about for that sweet sweet home game playoff revenue) but you're just banking on Cinderella runs that more often than not fall short anyway, not building a real contender.

And I get that Armstrong checked in on Timo Meier and tried to ship Krug out with one of the 1sts (not convinced that the latter would have necessarily been a good move and also Timo Meier has been terrible this year) but at the end of the day he didn't pull either of those or anything else of note off so...stuck in the middle it is.


Sorry for staking up comments here I came like twenty minutes late to the party.</div></div>

What is frustrating to me is when Army says he wants to replicate the LA rebuild. Except:
1 - their fading/aging talents (Kopitar, Doughty) are a lot better players than ours (Schenn, Parayko). It's a lesser gamble to count on the mid-30s of elite players.
2 - their draft picks were 5oa, 2oa (4oa before lotto), 8oa when they bottomed out. Does Army think 10oa-25oa-29oa last year was good enough to start the turnaround? If not, why did he build a team to try to get 85-90 pts?
3 - they found Fiala just like we found Buch, but we got Buch too early in the timeline and his impact on the future, rebuilt team is in limbo. Fiala's entire prime will be spent with the rebuilt team.
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 13 h 53
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 14 h 18
Forum: Armchair-GM4 déc. 2023 à 13 h 24
Forum: Armchair-GM27 nov. 2023 à 21 h 33
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Forum: Armchair-GM8 nov. 2023 à 12 h 1
Forum: Armchair-GM6 nov. 2023 à 12 h 58
<div class="quote"><div class="quote_t">Quoting: <b>TheEarthmaster</b></div><div>Binnington has been impressive. I was critical of him last year. Obviously the defense was bad but I felt Binnington had to shoulder some of the blame. I don't know how much the new system changes have really affected the Blues' defensively- I still feel they're very porous and the metrics would back that up. But Binnington is papering over those problems in a way he wasn't the last two years. I gotta give him props. I still don't expect him to be a .920+ goalie for the entire year, but if he's above league average that's a very strong development for a goalie that they're paying above league average.

With the offense, I really do think people (maybe including the Blues' front staff) really bought into Vrana/Kapanen/Blais' end of season performances, and ignored the elevated shooting percentages. They were good low cost bets to bring in, but were they a replacement for what Tarasenko and O"Reilly and Barbashev might have brought? I admit even I thought Vrana would be playing a lot better than he has been. I think Hayes is still finding his way, but I do think he's a perfectly serviceable 3C. 3x3.5 for a 3C is not bad.

The big problem with Hayes is that his role is redundant on the team because Schenn is playing like a 3C himself, at least at 5v5. I love his energy, I love what he brings to the table, I think it was a slam dunk to make him Captain. But he's looked over-exposed in the 2C spot this season. I hope it's just a slow start. He's currently on pace for less than 40 points.

I think where the offense has really suffered has been Kyrou. Yes he's been snakebitten. But everyone screaming about how bad he was defensively (on a team with two goalies below .900 and one of the worst defenses in the league) I think failed to consider that if we go down that road with him he might just be a player that ends up good at nothing. His defense has been better, but it's not anything spectacular. And now he's also not scoring. Again, maybe he's starting slow (and he's playing a lot of minutes with Schenn). You don't add a new dimension to your game overnight. But if this holds all year- is it going to have been worth it to turn your 8million dollar 30 goal scorer into a mediocre two way player?</div></div>

IMO the major problem with Hayes is that there are 2 more years after this one. Even if he can find enough game to excel in the 3C role, is he going to be yet another immovable, declining asset holding the team back until 2027? Because the other "freebie" acquisitions are gone after this year (fingers crossed Army doesn't start another contract extension party). They aren't here and ready now, but Snuggerud, Dean, Bolduc all need to get NHL time in the next couple years and they have Dvorsky and Stenberg that should be ready soon after.

I tend to agree with you on Kyrou - it scares me how many people think he needs to be a Selke guy to be valuable - although I think there is a happy medium where he backchecks without sacrificing all of his offense solely because of his skating. He can get himself to a lot of spots on the ice to disrupt things and still get up the ice on attack. I think it comes down to the mental side, knowing where to be, where the puck is going, etc. - and maybe this is a dissenting opinion but I do think those type of things are teachable.
Forum: Armchair-GM6 nov. 2023 à 12 h 39