I actually think this is a decent team if the D was healthy
Explain your position...
mikey, thank you for this opportunity.
(cover your eyes for this one) - Kapanen is better, faster, and a better fit on this team than Horny is. Putting him in a top 6 role instead of Sheary is a drastic upgrade.
- Tanev and Blueger appear to have upped their games, though it's early. Jankowski appears to be better as a 3C than McCann was.
- Having 4 competent top 6 wings allows our secondary guys to be secondary guys and not look out of place on Sid's wing. Our bottom 6 can actually score right now, it's nice.
- Assuming Dumo and Letang eventually play to their normal abilities, our top 4 of those 2, Marino and POJ is pretty good imo. Between Ceci, Matheson, Riikola and Ruwhedel we'll have a bottom pairing more competent than the one Jack Johnson was a part of last year.
- We don't have Jack Johnson anymore
- We don't have Matt Murray anymore
Thank you.
The board thanks ulf for his explanation.
In order:
Better? Unclear meaning. Faster? Yes, I'm faster than Hornqvist. Better fit? That assumes we have a structure and a goal in mind. I guess maybe better stated, what teams are playing in a way where you go, "You know what would really fit in with our mold? Patric Hornqvist!" Hornqvist is glue. Valuable glue. Hot, valuable glue. He fits anywhere because he makes himself fit.
Kapanen is likely better than Sheary, yes.
Narrowly, and I don't mean to be technical, but Blugers is our 3C right now. The choices of having Jankowski and Blugers as our third line center options is not championship material for me. This also goes back to the "better" comment about Hornqvist vs Kapanen. McCann is more technically skilled than Janko and Blue, is he a better 3C...? Possibly not.
The rest of that is various shades of agreeable.
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Historically, this team has kind of followed the Theory of Five core method...
One very good or star goalie, one very good/star d-man, three very good/star forwards. Obviously, there's variations to this. I prefer to have two strong d-men, for instance. But whatever, that's the deal. And then you ensure you get 5 points every 4 games. One should beget the other. When you add a sixth player or more, that's usually when you start speed-bagging teams (Hossa in '08 for instance, we went 12-2 on the East side - each time losing a game when already up 3-0).
With various roster losses and the seemingly imminent deterioration of Evgeni Malkin...not to be dramatic, but that is likely to happen as he works on 35 years old...we really don't have a strong core to build on.
I like Jarry, but we'll see...Letang is a goat here, but I have time for him. He's a #1 d-man in this league. Crosby. You could argue that Jake Guentzel carries some weight, is he a gamebreaker? Probably not. But he falls under the "very good" framework. He did have like 13 in 10 without Crosby last year, but he also got to play with Crosby-less Malkin, who we have come to know and love...but let's count him.
So your core, the spine of the team is: Jarry -- Letang -- Crosby - Guentzel - Malkin.
There's not a single other player in the organization that comes close to breaching that for me either.
We're competing against: Vasilevskiy -- Hedman - McDonagh -- Point - Stamkos
Rask -- McAvoy -- Marchand - Bergeron - Pastrnak
Samsonov -- Carlson -- Ovechkin - Backstrom - Kuznetsov - Oshie/Vrana
Hart -- Provorov - Couturier - Giroux - and at least one of those other skaters, maybe two.
That's a lot of weight on Jarry, that's a lot of weight on an old core, and that's a lot of weight on Guentzel.
So, the depth needs to fill in around it and be strong...and I'm not convinced of that...just eyeballing it, what do we really have...?
Guentzel = 1 LW* (support) - untested away from a HOF center
Crosby = 1 C (impact)
Rust = 2/3 RW (support)
Zucker = 2 LW I guess (support)
Malkin = 1 C for now (impact)
Kapanen = 3 RW (support)
McCann = 3 LW (support, possibly impact for role)
Blugers = 4 C
Tanev = 3 RW (impact for role)
ZAR = 4 LW
Jankowski = 4 C probably, 3 is a dreamboat scenario
Sceviour/ERod = 4 RW/13 F
Charitably, we have five or six top-six forwards. We don't really have a third line center. We'd have a terrific 4th line, but it comes at the cost of having a spare parts third, which is sort of a silly way to view the world...
Letang = 1 D (impact)
Dumoulin = 2/4 D (support)
Matheson = 3/5 D (?)
Marino = 3/4 D (we'll see, could be impact for role)
Pettersson = 6 D (support)
Ceci = 6/7 D
Ruhwedel = 6 D (support)
Riikola = ? (?)
Weber = 7 D
Ugh, I don't know that we have enough skill back there...there's not a lot of anything back there...I don't know what that defense is supposed to do, I don't know what you want to program them to do...I guess they can mostly skate, but only Letang and Marino can really move the puck, only Matheson can sort of carry it...
Jarry = we'll see, lot of upside, but first year really being the guy
DeSmith = fringe NHLer
Lagace = minor leaguer
It trails off very quickly compared to other rosters I see...there's no young, hungry kids around...like Philadelphia introduced Konecny, Provorov, Sanheim, Myers to an older core and sort of flipped their whole script...Washington introduced Vrana, Wilson, Orlov to an older core...
Guentzel for us, sure. I think Kapanen would be the worst player of any that I just mentioned above by a significant margin...Marino might belong...but it's pretty tough...it's sliding the wrong way for me...more accurately, it has slid the wrong way...now, of course, I'd give all my $GME earnings for another Cup with Sid and I pray that it happens...but this is an "out of ideas" roster for me, and you look at how it stacks up to others, we're water skiing behind them...
And of course, I understand selling your soul for Cups, I respect the hell out of it...we're the most successful franchise since the big sleep...that's the price. Chicago should go 0-56 this year. Los Angeles hasn't played an interesting game in five years...Detroit has one line that plays 63 minutes a game and the rest of the team watches...I get it the bell tolls for thee at some point...but it's really difficult to defend the roster we were given here, that Sullivan was given here, I'm not convinced we should have fired Martin and Gonchar either...I just think the wrong buttons are being pressed, and this was the result...