MuddyInTheMiddle

And that doesn't stop them from getting out of/trading one or more of the Tavares, Marner, and/or Nylander contracts. To me the Ryan Reaves 3 year deal is much more of a head scratcher and an impediment to their short term success.

100%. By that same token, we can't treat speculation as fact. I am a believer in where there is smoke, there is usually fire. We should just qualify our points a little more precisely.

Love how Pete matter of factly lays that on the table like he has been hanging out with Laffrenaire all Summer. This is the point where he replies to my post, and quotes a second hand and/or anonymous press blurb or two and then states it as proof that he hasn't worked all Summer.

Straight away speed and edge work are completely different things, albeit both hyper important to what people call elite skating. Straight away speed is just a combination of doing 3 things well: 1) Technique 2) Foot Speed 3) Conditioning. You can improve all 3(even though bad technique is incredibly hard to break) to develop better speed. It's pretty straightforward. Edge work is a different animal all together. That is much more about stops, turns and cutaways. It is something that is much more naturally influenced by a player's inherent balance and athletic ability; but technique, foot speed and conditioning also play a very important role in there as well.

Two days away from our first AA showcase of the season, so I figured that I would bump this up to the top of the forum. The weekend before Labor Day has been my end of Summer reality the last 6 years; who else has kids playing this weekend?

So fricking true. It immediately jumped out at me how every single prospect was ranked at or below NHL average. It's not like skating is 90+% of the game or anything. Genuinely wonder where the skating ranking of many former high end draft picks like Lunqkvist, Kravtsov, and Andersson that did not succeed, and if you can draw a straight line to what they are looking for when drafting.

It sounds like you have not attended a section meeting or in person CEP meeting(since most of these have thankfully gone to virtual since Covid); but whatever, I don't need to be right on this. You always seem to retreat to that "you're more interested in having an argument than a discussion" rebuttal when you can't make the better point. So have at it.

You still haven't debunked the argument on the table regarding contact in youth hockey; you just keep regurgitating you assumption that "they do more research on the subject than you do" which is probably correct, but still unsubstantiated. I really don't have a beef with USA Hockey; I was just articulating some examples of where they get it wrong to give my argument merit(kind of like you haven't done on this topic now twice in a row). FWIW, I believe that most of what USA Hockey does institute is spot on and good for the game; it's just not absolute. You would probably agree with if you ever attended a youth hockey section meeting or CEP in person course and witnessed some of the hubris that I have.

Haha! Thought the same exact thing until I read your post!

Having 6 years experience as a coach and board member of my son's youth hockey organization, when you start your point off by portraying USA Hockey as some kind of unquestionable institution, you kind of lose me on your argument(not that you care). There are several things that USA Hockey gets wrong in my opinion. Like not instituting touch-up off-sides through 18U, their dogmatism about not letting 8U play full ice hockey(which only drives kids/parents to play in AAU sanctioned tournaments/leagues), and the very logical and pragmatic points that Valriera made in his post above regarding hitting/contact. Like most nonprofit organizations of that size and revenue, it's a huge bureaucracy, and certainly has the shortcomings of typical bureaucracies. Instead of hiding your (lack of a) rebuttal behind the USA Hockey logo, why don't you pick out the points of Valriera argument that you disagree with and use that to shoot down his counter points?

To me it's a no-brainer to try and lock him up for 5-5.25 X 7 years(36.75) as long as the contract is front loaded and easy to buy out in years 6-7. As someone else pointed out, you can put sweetners in it like a NMC/NTC(in the 1st 3-4 years) and make it bonus heavy so it's lock-out proof. What is he getting on the open market? I would think like 6.5 X 5(32.5) as a high water mark. 5-5.25 X 7 years(36.75) would take him to 33 years old and make him a career Ranger. Look at the contracts that Marc Staal has been getting once that mega-deal(which was 2 years too long) that he signed expired. Unless Lingdren is going to age like Mark Giordano, the market for 31-33 year old defenseman is 750K-2 million.

It's scary when Pete and myself are so blatantly in lockstep on minutia.

You have to stop saying that because it is not factual. Can measure it 20 different ways, but if you look at last season as a microcosm since it was his "least productive" as a Ranger. Panarin was #3 in the league in AAV and #17 in production. According to CapFriendly there was 1,476 players that were under contract in the NHL. Based on those metrics he was: 99.8th percentile(3/1476= .0020) for AAV 98.9th percentile(17/1476=.0115) for production It seems silly to even try to argue the point to me. If you want to say that his 5v5 needs to improve; sure as others have pointed out the whole team's 5v5 was off last season. You can't argue that his salary was not commensurate with production though.

It's not even a smaller market, but more like a market with frugal almost bankrupt teams that need to circumvent the cap in order to function. If you remember correctly, the Panthers were one of the finalists for his services. Putting their amazing Stanley Cup run aside, the Panthers are the 2nd lowest revenue team in the NHL after Arizona. https://puckpath.com/nhl-teams-by-revenue To be fair, after perusing Cap Friendly it looks like Arizona is the only team that I see that still collects these terminally injured player's contracts to get to the cap floor, but that could just be a function of a flat cap. All of that aside, but agree that it still has no impact whatsoever on the analysis by the Athletic.

The fact that Arizona uses this salary vs. bonus loophole to circumvent the cap is 100% accurate; and should absolutely be closed(but why would the owners want that to happen when it helps keep salaries artificially lower). What I don't understand is; how is that relevant to this conversation. The original conversation was how AAV affects the "value" of a player vs. their 5v5 output which is certainly an interesting way to look at things, but really means nothing at all if you look at it myopically. A player's AAV is simply the total compensation of their contract divided by the number of years on that contract. How does the fact that we frontloaded Panarin's contract affect his AAV?

Agree to disagree to look at it that way; that 10 million signing bonus was for 2023-24 season compensation after all. The signing bonus structure(loophole) is really just there as a way to guarantee money up from that is not subject to the player escrow I believe.

Not sure where the 19 million over the next 3 years number came from, but Cap friendly has him at 29 million for the next 3 years? https://www.capfriendly.com/players/artemi-panarin

Looks like he landed in Montreal.

#diminishingasset

I get what you are saying about the skating(as skating is like 90+% of the modern game), but when you have someone projected much higher given what was left; you have to take the chance. It's very possible he could have no more than the career trajectory of a Sean Day, but then again he could have Tage Thompson type production 4-5 years down the road. It's all a crapshoot at this point of the 1st round. While those quotes from Pronman are most likely fair and accurate; he also had Perrault ranked #12 a month ago in his final pre-draft ranking. https://theathletic.com/4538998/2023/05/30/nhl-draft-rankings-2023-bedard-pronman/ Do agree 100% that fundamentals to skating like technique(edge work) and foot speed should be the primary metric when scouting, you have to swing for the fences on this pick. Even someone like Calum Ritchie who would have been my pick at this spot if Perrault was not available, is a drop off in terms of players available. I think that the only thing that they could have done better would have been to trade up for Moore.

I never said that they are ready to fall off of a cliff; I just simply said that diminishing returns are likely if some of the youth don't develop to a higher level. That means that this coaching hire is absolutely crucial.

It begs the question though, is there really much upside with this roster? You have a 32 year old Panarin, 32 year old Kreider, 30 year old Zibanejad, and a 29 year old Trouba; hate to say it, but it's far more likely that you are going to get diminishing returns over the next 3 seasons form those 4. Not impossible that they won't keep pace or put up higher production, just wouldn't bet on it with all four. Fox & Shesterkin are very much in their prime and should be consistent with their last 2 seasons. Kaako, Chytil, Lafrenaire, and Miller are all question marks on whether they will improve significantly. Personally I think Miller will be a star when he puts it all together; the other 3 I see as middle 6 forwards. I don't see a 70-80 point season happening for any of them. My point is that it seems likely that this team being run into the ground, is very much the trajectory and that the window will be closing very quickly over the next 3 seasons. I am in the Laviolette camp until I hear from someone else what Hynes brings to the table besides having played at Boston University with Drury.

I don't have the bandwidth to go through 13+ pages of this thread, but if the Rangers are looking for a system guy, has anyone brought up Barry Trotz?

Well great idea on Nosek then! I think Fast gets the same 2 million/3 year deal he is coming of off; maybe even slightly less as he is older now. Tops 2.25 million.

Actually really like those forward lines with someone slightly more productive at 4C; someone else suggested Nosek. Only thing that makes me scratch my head is how you have Fast at 3.5 million? He was had a 2 million cap hit on his last contract for almost the same production over the last 3 years, except now he is 3 years older. Am I missing something here?