Future

The point is that it's not simply TOI that leads to production. It was also his 4th year.....

Burns played 23:00 per night and led all defensemen in PP Time by a mile (3:09) in Minnesota in 2007-08.

What? Just trade Namestnikov retained for a 2059 7th-rounder or AHL fodder. You don't need to get value back. The value is dumping the contract.

Eh, that's probably only about $2m. It's more that GMs don't have a plan or, if they do, they forgot to ask their players if it worked for them. And they all try to get too cute. If you're WPG, just trade Perrault and lose a pick to get Connor and Laine signed. Are you really dying to keep Adam Lowry so bad that you want to play hardball with those guys? It's stupid. Having said that, the season isn't even close to starting, so both teams and agents are just waiting it out.

I mean you can say at one point they had 6-7 guys in their system who were, presumably, good. But you mentioned Tyutin, drafted in 2001 and Stralman acquired in 2011. Tyutin left in 2008. You're referencing a decades' worth of players with a couple who were never even really in the pipeline (Mac, Stralman). If you would've just said that they had a good group around 2010, then fine. But it's not close at all to the pipeline BBBE was talking about.

Your timelines are way off. Staal was on the team for 3 seasons before Mac arrived. Tyutin was like 4 years before Staal. Stralman was acquired as a 25 y.o. free agent. They've never had a defensive pipeline like this, not even close.

Same. And the article said it was a difference of like $600k. Teams overpay by that much to get players all the time. If not for the context the convo would be "Philly overpaid a bit, but they got their guy" and nobody would bat an eye.

No, I haven't changed anything lol. I didn't say they were mediocre. I said they were bad and am still saying it. They were mediocre relative to other teams in the conference that year. You can be do that and still be bad when you don't look at one season in a vacuum.

Lol. I mean what are they for Hutton

What are they? "Analytic darlings" are pretty exclusively defined by shot share, and Hutton's are poor. I guess he could be good at defending the blueline or something, but so is Brendan Smith.

I mean of course it's subjective. I have been saying that being in the playoffs that year doesn't make them good, relative to the era, if you want to put it that way. Others are saying that they had 97 points and made the playoffs so they are. Were they average that year, sure. But average doesn't mean good in a larger context.

It's relevant because they were both 8 seeds but one of those teams is clearly better than the other. Nobody sane would pick the Devils in that series but, by your logic, the Devils are the better team. Based on your perspective, they aren't comparable, because they're different seeds. The higher seed (Blues) is the team you'd take every time, but I don't think the Blues were that much better last year than that Preds team.

Nah, his analytics are trash. I guess that could make him a Staal replacement lol

Lol yea. I had to read it a few times before I knew what they were talking about.

Hmmm, not sure I really get this one. I guess he could be your #7, if Smith is in Hartford, but I don't see how that makes sense for him OR the Rangers.

Not quite. It's a WAR projection based on how prospects with similar pre-NHL careers have fared in the past.

This has always been the issue with Shatty. $3.25 or whatever for one year is easy. For two is really, really difficult.

Right, but that's what I mean. D+5 is where a guy like Lias is likely to hit his stride. Not when he's 21. Couturier was in that same boat. Schenn was traded as part of the Richards deal though, it wasn't like the Kings were giving up on him. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't trade Lias, I'd be fine with it, but there's a difference between trading him because you think he's a bust, and trading him to get an All Star back.

Yea, agreed with next year as an important season, but even still, it's not like he has to produce. I don't think people consider Brayden Schenn a bust, and he didn't score 20 goals until 5 years after he was drafted. Lias could go 10-20 and be right where he should be in his development, but some will simply look at that and think he's a bust. Valli made a good point that Cally was 23 when he entered the league, and that's important. Lias has higher expectations because of his draft status, but that doesn't mean they should be impatient with him.

Sure, but the discussion was if he's also a ~25-goal scorer. We can go back and forth about whether or not he can ever score 25 goals, but that's not really the point here.

You added 5 rounds lol. Talking specifically about the 2nd round.

Right now, yea. But I wouldn't sleep on the physical maturation of any of Howden, Lias, Chytil over the offseason. At that age, you can make huge strides, physically. Howden, in particular, doesn't have the offensive upside of Chytil, but if you put him in the middle of, say, Kreider and Buch, he can be effective if he lets the other two feel confident in springing the zone.

31 players have played more than 100 NHL games from the 2012, 13, 14, 15 second rounds. That's fewer than 10 a year and includes a bunch of guys who are bottom roster filler, defensemen and goalies. The number of forwards who have scored 20 goals in a season from that group is 2 (Bertuzzi, Aho). There's really nothing to suggest that anything after the first round is "ripe" with 20-goal, two-way players.

Who would you pick in a series, the 16-17 Preds, or the 17-18 Devils?

It's average. Depending on the quality of competition, average can be bad. Average can be good. That year, the league as a whole was down, so the middle of the pack was bad, particularly in the East. Good/Bad has context outside of a single season. I mean, we talk all the time about how it's difficult to compare things like goal scoring from era to era. A great goal scorer in 2019 might score 50. That doesn't necessarily mean they're a better goal scorer than someone who scored 40 pre-lockout. In 2004, 3 guys (Rick Nash, Kovalchuk, Iginla) scored more than 40 goals - all had 41. This year, 11 guys did it. Are we going to sit here and say that Alex DeBrincat is a better goal scorer than Jarome Iginla? Is Robin Lehner (.914) a better goalie than Mike Richter (.904) because he has a better sv%? The same thing applies to teams. Being in the playoffs one year doesn't mean your as good as the teams who made the playoffs another year.