Gravesy

Focusing on Laf/Kakko and bemoaning the fact they’re nowhere near as good as Hughes seem wide of the mark after the last two games. We’ve known they’re not in his stratosphere for a long time, and we were never riding them to the Stanley Cup anyway. What you should be worried about is Jack Hughes dominating and completely outshining everybody in our top 6.

And it's not like he's prime Dom Haseking them either. Not to take anything away from him, he's been very solid, but they've made it incredibly easy. All perimeter stuff, no traffic, no crashing the net, literally nothing bar the Trochek goal from high danger areas. The bottom line is when your highly paid stars go 0/10 on the pp and do the square root of fuck all in two straight home games you're going to be in trouble.

This guy is getting lit up tonight. Pulled before we reach the halfway point tbph.

Are they not people of culture and class, i.e. Rangers fans?

Nope. Lost game 1. Then won 2 straight and had a chance to take it back to the Garden 3-1. Instead they didn't show up and lost the next 2, facing elimination in g6 which was the guarantee. I don't want to get cute here, but I don't see it happening. A split at the Garden at the worst.

You have to pinch your nose and hope the Fish Sticks take it to 7.

A deeply impressive road playoff win against a team that had to have it. The way the Rangers have played in these 2 games has got my belief level pretty damn high. Bar that little flurry to start the 3rd we've given them absolutely nothing. It sort of reminds me of the play in V the Canes, where the Rangers were a fast, offensively talented team that was unable to get anything at all going against a smarter, heavier opponent. Also, Pat Fucking Kane. Where did that come from?

His “effort” tracking back on the ot goal last night was utterly pitiful to be fair

Fuck that. He knew what that guy did to the poor kid, and kept quiet about it. An absolute gormless prick, I’m not letting him anywhere near my team.

.

Laffy took that guy’s lunch money

imo

I don't think their success with homegrown players compares particularly favorably with any of the successful organizations in the past couple of decades. But that's not really the point here. The point is that the two guys were drafted by a good team, who are trying to win now, who aren't really in the business of sacrificing short term success for the development of young players and where they subsequently were never going to be handed anything. As opposed to most other top 2 picks who typically get long leashes on the 1st line and PP1, which has a tendency to fast track development. That being said, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that regardless of who drafted them, these two guys were never the franchise altering pieces they were sold as. They probably have absolute ceilings of good to very good 2nd line wingers.

I'm not sure your definition of slam dunk vs consensus is the dictionary version of not, but I would've thought my point was pretty clear. There's no point going down the road of "The Rangers should've taken player X instead of Kakko" or "player Y instead of Lafreniere" with the benefit of hindsight. Because, when the Rangers were on the clock, taking anyone other than the players they took would've been insanity and would've gone done as something like top 10 reaches of all time. The fact neither of them has panned out so far is a combination of bad luck, situation and the Rangers as a developmental organization. And possibly also the hockey community as a whole under rating the importance of skating and foot speed for prospects in the modern game. But like I said, literally every GM past and present would've taken those two when it was time to turn the card in. Whether or how you pay them is a separate discussion, and one where I think we're aligned.

If the Rangers hadn't taken Kakko and Lafreniere with those two picks there would've been legitimate calls for everyone involved to be institutionalized. Slam dunk picks, the fact they have yet to break out properly is down to a load of factors that have been covered ad nauseum. Revisiting those two decisions is completely pointless.

Ok, I must have skimmed a bit too hard. Don’t really disagree with any of this.

Lafreniere is a complete outlier in that he had historical production in juniors yet it hasn't really translated at all. In any case, this isn't about Lafreniere as much as it is about Othmann. Expecting him to "blow the doors off" Laffy's production means, what, 50+ points in his first year? That just seems like a lot to ask from a guy who isn't dominating juniors the way you typically have to in order to get anywhere near that sort of production in the pros.

I mean, Othmann may have more translatable and dynamic traits. But production in junior is highly indicative of NHL performance, and Othmann isn't able to use his traits to dominate a vastly inferior league. So the idea he's going to come in and "blow the doors" off Lafreniere who outproduced him by a factor of 2 as a younger player just seems very unlikely. Not impossible, certainly, but you're hoping for a lot here.

Othmann is scoring at half the clip of Lafreniere as an over ager in juniors. The idea that he’s going to come in and be better than Laf is total wish casting imo

1. Mika Zibanejad 2. Artemi Panarin 3. Adam Fox 4. Vincent Trocheck 5. Chris Kreider 6. Filip Chytil 7. Kappo Kakko 8. Vladimir Tarasenko +1 9. Igor Shesterkin 10. Alexis Lafrenière 11. K'Andre Miller 12. Ryan Lindgren 13. Jacob Trouba 14. Jaroslav Halak 15. Braden Schneider 16. Patrick Kane +1 17. Jimmy Vesey 18. Niko Mikkola 19. Barclay Goodrow 20. Ben Harpur 21. Tyler Motte

“I’ll have some of whatever it is this guy’s having”

You ride out Shesty's contract, and you take your chances after that. The examples where paying a goalie at the top of the market works out are few and far between.

Yeah, that's probably fair. My feeling on Graves is massively influenced by the 94 run, probably more than I realize. I think it's colored by personality types too. Some guys are these larger than life individuals, some - like Kreider - aren't. When I think of Graves I think of him sacrificing his well being to score a goal, cost what it may, blood all over his jersey etc. I think of him skating around in warm ups for game 7, looking up at the Garden faithful to the deafening noise of "We want the cup" - totally unfazed. Maybe my favorite moment in sports ever. I don't have those moments with Kreider. I think you're right in that, if you isolate just the two as players, they're not miles apart.