Fifth Avenue Forum

Don't get my hopes up, Gaucho.

Wooooooo!!! Couple more weeks...

Yep that’s a guy skating in a circle all right.

any day now

Lol

Dude missed a wide open net too.

At least he didn't turn it over just inside the blue line.

jumped in and out of holes for no apparent reason

Navy material.

lol'd at ulf's ellipsis comment

Good stuff meow. "His game grew on me" is exactly the macro tracking for Legare for me as well...interesting that it happened to you in-game.

Like I said a couple months ago, I think he's our #1 prospect.

LFG

I think that he doesn’t have one A+ skill might have been why I undersold him early. After the seventh time I thought “oh that was a nice little play” I had to reevaluate a bit. He’s a very sturdy player, which I did not expect.

His shot is intense. But yeah, there's a willingness to grind and mix it up now. It's not like other prospects that are just out there to shoot (Puustinen) and the rest of their game is hollow. This guy plays with a sandpaper jock...but he's got brains too to make up for his sort of square wheels...

I'm excited about DOC. Kid keeps getting better and better. Can fill in anywhere in the top 12 pretty much right now.

Interesting we have a bit of a log jam up front now. Probably because Erod and Simon are playing way better than they're supposed to. I probably wouldn't hate a heinen-erod-kapanen line if Carter plays wing with 71.

In all seriousness, I don't view what we have as a log jam. Once Malkin gets back, the bottom six improves a lot. But Crotch - despite some production - is still awful to watch...Simon didn't come back any better than he left. Heinen is a low-residue player, but at least he can shoot. But this is a player that tends to just go all Niklas Nordgren for 30 games in a row...

I think we have to wait to see what happens when the temperature changes and the house settles. It's easy to rile up the Crotch's and Heinen's of the world because no Malkin and no Crosby means it can be point night for you to get another NHL contract. That's the line that they're on: get another one-way. When you really look deeply at their games, it's rough when you're looking at it through an NHL lens. So, when they get stuffed way down and they don't get to take the same ice as even Bryan Rust, where do they go? How do they react?

If they continue to deliver even a piece of this production, that's really great...even if they don't play defense well, I'll still take that...but I have my doubts...

Heinen is on pace for 28 goals. If he gets 15 or 17, that'd be great.
Crotch is on pace for 60 points. If he gets 30, that'd be great.
ZAR is on pace for 26 points. If he gets a career high, that'd be great.

I have my doubts about them getting to those reduced checkpoints...but if we exceed them, we have McGinn as a known quantity, we have Carter as a known quantity, then we have a bottom six that can provide some run support...

Heinen - ERod - Simon is a bit of a joke as a line. Not what I'd have in mind for meaningful games.

Idc what erods career trajectory has been up to this point, he's playing great hockey, has all the confidence in the world, and is earning his minutes.

I disagree. I'll try to demonstrate.

I mean you can and you won't be wrong, but the puck is following him. He can make 3 bad plays with the puck to every 1 good one. As long as the 3 bad plays aren't high danger (usually aren't) and the volume stays where it is, I take that any day in the bottom 6. He has 13 points... the last of which was a very good play

He's playing well, but he seems to have more confidence than is warranted. He tends to try to do things he can't do.

That's really the crux of it and this might save me the time. But just watch how he handles the puck, look at the accuracy of his passes, look at how he catches passes, how he throws pucks away on plays that are breaking down a bit...it's such a mess. His points are a product of quantity of opportunity than quality of player. Even my girlfriend (veteran of <100 games watched), unprovoked, said in a play versus Washington, "why did 9 do that..." and she rarely says anything about plays that aren't goals...

I mean, even re-watch the game against Ottawa - a three point game for him - and it just stinks, man. He's just a bad player.

Circumstances are relevant though. You have a guy that gets a lot of touches making low danger mistakes. It's not like the bad plays are holding back the abilities of his line made up of a replacement-level middle sixer and a Quad-A guy.

If these plays were happening on sids or carter's wing I'd feel differently. But this is a guy making a relatively listless line relevant. If that line spends 25 seconds cycling the puck and erod makes a TK-like shot that leads to a loss of possession rather than putting a pass in *dominik simon's* wheelhouse who cares?

This was when he was a top-six center...but that's what I'm saying, if he can continue some degree of production with Simon and Heinen or whoever, then I'll take that and sleep like a baby. But it's much harder, for instance, to make bad passes to Danton Heinen and have play continue than it is to Jake Guentzel.

That's part of what makes Crosby such a play driver. You can throw a pass anywhere within 12 feet of him and he tracks it down. He has a Megatron-esque catch radius. Dominik Simon's catch radius is whatever fits in his baseball glove...