Provost

Am I missing something? You made a claim that Green isn't communicating with Virtanen by making some tenuous connection that Dahlen claimed his AHL coach (not Green by the way) didn't communicate with him enough. Not only was Green NOT Dahlen's coach... but Dahlen has since flopped out of the AHL with his NEW team and coach and is now playing in a 2nd tier Swedish league.... so it seems pretty clear that there is more keeping him out of the NHL than one coach not talking with him enough. There is no way to correlate the two things at all really, and I have no idea why messaging DeNiro for a claim you are making would be appropriate. If he thinks the same as you, then he can read my response to your claim.

I think everyone knows what Green expects of Jake at this point. He has said that they have at down with Virtanen many many times and that they told him exactly what do do. Green has said it in press conferences at least a dozen times. “We need Jake to be consistent and use his size and speed to drive to the net, good things will happen if he does that”. Cut to the next game and Jake using his size and speed to fend off defenders, drive to the net, and score. Then cut to the next 10 games where Jake sees a defender between him and the net, so cuts away to the perimeter... circles behind the net with the puck, and passes it to the opposition”. Rinse, Repeat for 7 seasons.

Ya, you have to use a package of stats to tell you anything about a player. You can’t use this one with really Corsi though to tell you much as that doesn’t fly just with how stats are supposed to be properly used. Corsi (presumably 5v5 which is what everyone quotes) measures all 5v5 shifts. dZone/oZone% measures a small subset of those shifts. To use two different stats for comparison or relativity, they need to measure the same “population” (have the same denominator), or be shown to be representative of each other.... otherwise it just isn’t proper to relate them to each other because they are just apples and oranges. By literal definition, dZone starts is NOT a representative sample of all 5v5 shifts... Trying to figure out a clear example to explain it... Eg. 10% of B.C.’s population is Chinese 40% of Kelowna’s population has dark hair. Does that mean 10% of Kelowna’s population is Chinese? That 1/4 of all dark haired people in Kelowna are a Chinese? You would be wrong if you said either of those things. There is nothing you can infer from comparing the two numbers because they aren’t measuring the same population. Sure people in Kelowna are a small subset of people in BC (about 6%) just like oZone starts are a small subset of all shifts (about 2-8% depending on the player)... that doesn’t mean you can use one number to compare to the other because one isn’t representative of the other. If you WERE measuring the same population, you can actually infer things. (Assuming close to 100% of Chinese people in BC have dark hair) if 10% of people in BC are Chinese, and 40% of people in BC have dark hair.... then about 1/4 of dark haired people in BC are Chinese. That math works, you can relate the two things to each other bedside they are measuring the same population. Did that make it more confusing? Not sure if I am explaining it well. You could be terribly defensively and get scored on every time you have a defensive zone shift start.... but also be amazing offensively and score every time you have an offensive, neutral zone start, or shift starting on the fly which would give you a great Corsi... but also have a dZone start % well above 50%. Because the 2nd number is is only counting a tiny subset of your shifts... it doesn’t tell you much of anything. There is also the plain fact the oZone/dZone% measures only a tiny number of shifts and doesn’t really vary much from player to player. Which means in pure numbers it is only the difference of less than a shift a game between guys with a high dZone start% and a low dZone start%. Best to forget that stat entirely and just use amount of PK time and PP time to infer which players are deployed more in a defensive or offensive way.

Hahahahaha. It is predictable who are the people who are sour at this stuff... Grabner was waived after the trade before he played another game in the league. It was an excellent trade. We got a player in return that we needed for a guy we could have picked up for free off waivers right after. Can’t even fault the team for not picking him up off waivers after, we had the best roster in the league and he couldn’t crack it. That isn’t a failure of the trade at all though... again, we got a roster player for someone who was waiver wire fodder. Grabner ended up carving out a decent career as a 3rd liner. Ballard was a part of our roster that gave us the two best years in the entire organization’s history. We also got the joy of about 4,000 trade proposals of Ballard and a 2nd out of the trade... so pretty solid return.

Yikes... someone doesn’t like being told no. I guess this is what women mean by how badly dudes can react? You asked a question, I responded with a joke and you got all weird and angry... go for a walk or something man.

Stop hitting on me, you are getting kind of creepy. You don’t look like you have $2.5 million anyways...

.. earn $2.5 million? yes

Pretty much. We need Holtby to expose in expansion, but if we can replace him with a cheaper signed backup who fills those requirements... sure. Play all the kids for the last hunk of games this season, then rebuild the bottom half of the roster during expansion and in another UFA market where money is tight and there will be deals to be had.

This forum certainly will! There are people still sour that we “lost” Michael Grabner and Frankie Corrado

We don’t have any good players to pick... they will probably select a prospect from us like Lind. you are right, why would they take a player like Virtanen or Myers when they could get a comparable one in free agency for cheaper this offseason when money is going to be tight again.

Don’t get me wrong... I think it is a terrible idea and that they should trade Jake just for a pick to save the cap space. My post was how we could turn it into a positive IF Heinen was the piece coming this way. The cap savings is how. Based on Jim’s previous record though, it is straight up for each other... with the teams haggling about whether we throws them a 2nd round pick or 3rd round pick as a sweetener.

Ugh... I hope this is better than I think it will be. Maybe something good in a package (if Heinen is the main piece coming back )could be: Virtanen Rafferty Baertschi for Heinen Two low end minor league players to even up the contract numbers At least it saves us cap money right now, even if it doesn’t make the team any better. The value of making enough cap space to not push the ELC bonuses (if we can also move a couple expiring players) would turn it into a win. Anaheim has a ton of LTIR room, so absorbing Baertschi for the rest of the year doesn’t hurt them.

It is possible a few teams can make hockey trades in advance of expansion... but I think you are drastically underestimating the impact of expansion. Teams also have to be able to protect the player they receive in that trade, or it pushes someone else out of a protected slot which puts a big chill on trades. Most teams aren’t in our “advantageous” spot of having so many players exempt, on bad contracts, or just too terrible a player to worry about losing. Chicago has two of their 3 D slots used up for NMCs, so are almost certainly going to lose a top 4D. There are quite a number of teams in the same boat that have 4 or 5 guys to protect and not enough protected slots. We have exactly 1 D that we “need” to protect in Schmidt... maybe two if you can’t upgrade on Juolevi.

Ugh... as much as I would like to see Jake traded, I would really it rather be picks and use the cap space. Maybe if Anaheim took Baertschi as well that makes a difference. They have lots of LTIR space to absorb it and it would pay off for us in maybe not pushing some ELC bonuses into next year if we can also move Sutter and Pearson in different moves

Yep pretty much. Toronto and Winnipeg would have to win against everyone (but not us). The Ottawa stealing points to help us path has mostly closed. They are just two points behind us once you factor in games played. If they steal points now, it is to pass us. I guess if you assume we win 10 gamew in a row, it would be fine if Ottawa also won 10 games in a row and stole points from the teams ahead of us... by stayed two points behind us. The scenarios are getting pretty far fetched...

Even the 10 game win streak probably doesn’t do it at this point. The teams we are chasing all play each other too.... so we need to win 10 and somehow have ALL the other teams ahead of us play well under .500 for that stretch... which is tough to do when all the games they play against each other will have one winner.

All those teams are playing better than us, evening “slipping”. 2% chance. Not impossible, but pretty close to it. I get being hopeful... but it is just not realistic now.

Honestly, oZone and dZone % are a terrible stat that is WAY overused here. The way people talk about it makes it clear they don’t know what the stat is measuring. I have explained it before but people keep misusing it. It is measuring the ratio of those starts just 5 on 5 that are ALSO just in either offensive or defensive zone... and excludes all the on the fly and neutral zone shift starts, which is the bulk of them. For most players it ranges around 80-90% of their total shifts that are entirely excluded from this stat. It also doesn’t account for how many minutes they are on the ice and how many shifts they take. A guy who plays 4 shifts a game, 3 of them in the neutral zone, and one in the dZone gets a 100% dZone start %. A guy who plays 30 shifts a game and gets 5 shifts in the dZone, 5 in the oZone, and 20 on the fly or in the neutral zone gets a 50% dZone start %... if you use the % to explain the first guy is taking the hardest defensive minutes... you are just wrong... it is really meaningless and tells you nothing. The difference between a 45% dZone start and 55/% is about a shift every 2 games depending on the player. If you are using that to measure a player’s performance, you are making a massive mistake.... because it doesn’t tell you much of anything at all. Horvat had 259 dZone starts in 69 games last year (3.75 a game) and 49.4% dZone start ratio. Beagle had 171 dZone starts in 55 games last year (3.1 shifts a game) and a 77% dZone start ratio. Which guy was leaned on more heavily defensively? The % ratio indicates almost nothing. Horvat had vastly more dZone starts overall and showed over 27% lower dZone start ratio? Horvat has the most dZone starts again this season of all our forwards but he is a sheltered top 6? He has 72 vs. Roussel’s 45... who is getting the tough defensive minutes? The stat is really just bad and shouldn’t be used how folks are using it.

+/- just isn’t a good stat to measure a player’s effectiveness with. Lots of it is luck, it excludes all special teams, and it ignores who is getting the toughest matchups. Someone keeping McDavid to just a couple points a game is doing a lot more work than someone getting all their minutes against Khaira. You can’t win games if you don’t score, so if a player isn’t scoring AND is being scored against they aren’t helping you win. Our top few players are responsible for most of our scoring by a long shot.

I think that is true, fair or not. Green had the team playing above their talent level and worked hard every night last year. Most players on the team had career years. Opposing coaches and the knowledgeable pundits remarked on how well the team was coached... and how any team coming into town knew they were going to have a hard time matching the effort output. Did he forget how to be a coach because of a Covid break? Was it just a fluke all along? Was the team equally bad, but just had a Vezina level goaltender hiding it all? (easy to be aggressive and push forward hard every shift when you don't need to worry about backchecking and coverage since your goalie is going to save the day every time). Honestly, I think most of the difference is in the horses Green has to work with this year and maybe he hasn't adjusted properly to those losses. Aside from Markstrom... Tanev AND Stecher were our best defensive D in terms of shot suppression and match ups. That is a lot to lose in a short period of time when that was already a weakness on the team. I don't see how Benning comes out of this year (barring a miraculous turnaround that has us at least sniffing at the playoffs), so the coach is a decision for after that. You don't saddle a new GM with a coach that was just picked and signed long term. Probably the order is: Hire a President Fire Benning and Weisbrod (or just keep them under supervision for the new President to assess) Put in an interim GM (if you fire Benning) Fire some of the coaching staff Put in an interim guy like Smyl for the last hunk of the season who isn't in the plans for a permanent replacement Wait to see who is available in the offseason for both coach and GM One would "think" our job is an attractive one, there are pieces in place and most would bet we are on the upswing. It makes a GM look like a genius taking a team from perennial lottery team to playoffs in a short period... even if it was really just mostly timing. A lot better than taking a job with an aging core like Pittsburgh where it will be hard to look good, even with all the right moves.

You can’t discount things because of hindsight but also give credit because of hindsight. I did a pretty exhaustive list above of who would have been picked by a bunch of other lists. Virtanen and Juolevi are clear misses by any measure with any information we have up until now and ignoring wishful thinking future prognostications (Like Virtanen will become Cam Neely and Juolevi will be an elite 2nd pairing D). Years out from their drafts, Virtanen is an inconsistent 3rd liner and Juolevi is a low minute, sheltered 3rd pairing D with only a handful of games under his belt. Nylander/Ehlers and Tkachuk who most folks picked in those spots are just better... a lot better. Just like Petterson is a lot better than Vilardi/Glass who most other lists picked in that spot. Maybe Vilardi takes off and bypasses Petterson... but you can’t use that rationale because it hasn’t happened yet, just like you can’t say what Juolevi might become. Boeser/McCann/Hughes are pretty much a wash because almost all the lists pick them if they were available when e drafted. Podkolzin is too early to make any judgment on. It is Ok to actually have a nuanced viewpoint. It doesn’t have to be “Benning is a drafting genius and his mistakes can be ignored” or “Benning is the worst drafter and just benefited by having high picks” The in between is that he is better than average at drafting... but has made plenty of mistakes too, enough to not give him a top grade.

I think it is a better decision to wait until the end of the season and see what the GM choices are. I do think Rutherford would be better than Benning (Rutherford has never “run out of time” to make deals). but that doesn’t mean he is the best possible candidate. I think it is necessary to get a guy with experience this time, and someone “in the circle” if possible. We also need a President as the job is just too much for one person nowadays. My vote would still be to hire a guy like Larionov right away to be President and hold the reins for the rest of the year and oversee the selling off of rentals and clearing cap space if possible. Then at the end of the season see what GM candidates are out there. You can keep or fire Benning and Weisbrod in the short term... doesn’t matter that much if you have an interim GM for a couple months.

3 Stanley Cups with two teams and a career .650 winning percentage... Why would we want that when we can have the only sub .500 winning GM who has been employed for more than 5 years without being fired. Makes sense .

That is hilarious... I wish I could say I had see that before my reference. It was just a wonderful coincidence... Just good karma coming my way for living so well.