Speculation: 2022-2023 General Lightning Discussion - Part 2

[These Are The Days]

Raddysh is scoring goals on one of the worst teams in the league. Somebody's gonna score there.

Our development in general has been among the best in the league. Hagel was 23 when he got here and it wasnt like we held him down.

Yes, it's hard to win jobs in the nhl, and it gets harder on better teams. Our entire success arc is based on young guys coming in and out playing their draft status, or their perceived value.

The problem I have is we can be such hard asses to certain players in their development and then as soon as we have roster turnover we just pour in everyone else left over and then trade them. Like what the hell are we doing with Colton? I'm being serious. I swear sometimes it's like we're purposely mutating him into Cirelli after he came up and played such a simple but offensively effective game. And now if guys such as Finley, Thompson and Goncalves make the jump it's not because they're doing such a great job, it's because the school bus needs to be jettisoned to outer space and Alex Killorn is gonna cost too much.

There's never any flow. Historically we just bring guys up because we basically have to and once we do, you're just throwing dice hoping it works like it did with Gourde and Point. Now we just draft 20 year olds and pray

 

[DFC]

The problem I have is we can be such hard asses to certain players in their development and then as soon as we have roster turnover we just pour in everyone else left over and then trade them. Like what the hell are we doing with Colton? I'm being serious. I swear sometimes it's like we're purposely mutating him into Cirelli after he came up and played such a simple but offensively effective game. And now if guys such as Finley, Thompson and Goncalves make the jump it's not because they're doing such a great job, it's because the school bus needs to be jettisoned to outer space and Alex Killorn is gonna cost too much.

There's never any flow. Historically we just bring guys up because we basically have to and once we do, you're just throwing dice hoping it works like it did with Gourde and Point. Now we just draft 20 year olds and pray

And we've been to three finals in a row.

 

[Felonious Python]

The problem I have is we can be such hard asses to certain players in their development and then as soon as we have roster turnover we just pour in everyone else left over and then trade them. Like what the hell are we doing with Colton? I'm being serious. I swear sometimes it's like we're purposely mutating him into Cirelli after he came up and played such a simple but offensively effective game. And now if guys such as Finley, Thompson and Goncalves make the jump it's not because they're doing such a great job, it's because the school bus needs to be jettisoned to outer space and Alex Killorn is gonna cost too much.

There's never any flow. Historically we just bring guys up because we basically have to and once we do, you're just throwing dice hoping it works like it did with Gourde and Point. Now we just draft 20 year olds and pray

Player development has a lot of survivorship bias. Players like Point and Perbix basically stepped into the lineup. Sure, they went to Syracuse, but they were relatively short stops at the end of their college/junior careers.

You can get extremely valuable players with lengthier minor league experience, like Gourde or MSL, but player development isn't a guarantee or clear path.

 

[Byrddog]

And we've been to three finals in a row.

The last 5 years have been great. It is few times a team has this type success. The issue now is how to rebuild this team. The farm has been spent and in 5 years the core is going to be pretty much finished . There will be nothing in the pipeline except late round picks , even though the team has had some success drafting late that is not something that works out long term.

There is going to be a painful decade of suck like after 2004. Probably worse with the cap uncertainty.

With this core you can expect to make the playoffs each of the next three years drafting in the mid teens , an area where it is a crap shoot for talent. Teams like the Sabres and Devils are just entering the area the Bolts were in 17 and 18 the Rangers are going to be a player as well. This cyclical rise and fall since the cap was brought in was expected but the rebuild years are effected by what each GM does for there team. At some point one has to think that salaries need to be controlled. Soon a player will get 12 mil a year and the argument will be that he deserves it. But when one guy is 14% of the cap ? It is not sustainable. We are suffering this right now inability to ice even two dominate lines and the defensive woes are all cap related. Currently the roster has too many large salaries with term too. It’s all good when it works and you go to three finals in a row then it does not work any longer and the scramble starts. That’s the area we just entered.

 

[Master P]

The last 5 years have been great. It is few times a team has this type success. The issue now is how to rebuild this team. The farm has been spent and in 5 years the core is going to be pretty much finished . There will be nothing in the pipeline except late round picks , even though the team has had some success drafting late that is not something that works out long term.

There is going to be a painful decade of suck like after 2004. Probably worse with the cap uncertainty.

With this core you can expect to make the playoffs each of the next three years drafting in the mid teens , an area where it is a crap shoot for talent. Teams like the Sabres and Devils are just entering the area the Bolts were in 17 and 18 the Rangers are going to be a player as well. This cyclical rise and fall since the cap was brought in was expected but the rebuild years are effected by what each GM does for there team. At some point one has to think that salaries need to be controlled. Soon a player will get 12 mil a year and the argument will be that he deserves it. But when one guy is 14% of the cap ? It is not sustainable. We are suffering this right now inability to ice even two dominate lines and the defensive woes are all cap related. Currently the roster has too many large salaries with term too. It’s all good when it works and you go to three finals in a row then it does not work any longer and the scramble starts. That’s the area we just entered.

 

[Felonious Python]

The last 5 years have been great. It is few times a team has this type success. The issue now is how to rebuild this team. The farm has been spent and in 5 years the core is going to be pretty much finished . There will be nothing in the pipeline except late round picks , even though the team has had some success drafting late that is not something that works out long term.

There is going to be a painful decade of suck like after 2004. Probably worse with the cap uncertainty.

With this core you can expect to make the playoffs each of the next three years drafting in the mid teens , an area where it is a crap shoot for talent. Teams like the Sabres and Devils are just entering the area the Bolts were in 17 and 18 the Rangers are going to be a player as well. This cyclical rise and fall since the cap was brought in was expected but the rebuild years are effected by what each GM does for there team. At some point one has to think that salaries need to be controlled. Soon a player will get 12 mil a year and the argument will be that he deserves it. But when one guy is 14% of the cap ? It is not sustainable. We are suffering this right now inability to ice even two dominate lines and the defensive woes are all cap related. Currently the roster has too many large salaries with term too. It’s all good when it works and you go to three finals in a row then it does not work any longer and the scramble starts. That’s the area we just entered.

The Wings were pretty much able to extend their elite status because they hit with late picks Zetterberg and Datsyuk. Eventually the late picks stopped working out so well, and ended up needing a larger rebuild.

I don't really see how we can decide how we'll rebuild in the future. Too much will be different. Will we have a basically good team, and be able to retool? Will we need to sell everything and try to get some top picks? What will our organizational strengths be? Will we have a generational head scout? What will ownership want?

Detroit was able to benefit from scouting the (then) under scouted Sweden and Russia. Where are those areas now? Probably German-speaking countries. Somebody, somewhere, is getting undervalued.

 

[DFC]

The last 5 years have been great. It is few times a team has this type success. The issue now is how to rebuild this team. The farm has been spent and in 5 years the core is going to be pretty much finished . There will be nothing in the pipeline except late round picks , even though the team has had some success drafting late that is not something that works out long term.

There is going to be a painful decade of suck like after 2004. Probably worse with the cap uncertainty.

With this core you can expect to make the playoffs each of the next three years drafting in the mid teens , an area where it is a crap shoot for talent. Teams like the Sabres and Devils are just entering the area the Bolts were in 17 and 18 the Rangers are going to be a player as well. This cyclical rise and fall since the cap was brought in was expected but the rebuild years are effected by what each GM does for there team. At some point one has to think that salaries need to be controlled. Soon a player will get 12 mil a year and the argument will be that he deserves it. But when one guy is 14% of the cap ? It is not sustainable. We are suffering this right now inability to ice even two dominate lines and the defensive woes are all cap related. Currently the roster has too many large salaries with term too. It’s all good when it works and you go to three finals in a row then it does not work any longer and the scramble starts. That’s the area we just entered.

The inability to ice two dominant lines is... well, we've never iced two dominant lines. At least not offensively.

I think this talk of rebuild is two years premature. Even if it's unlikely we win another cup, we are very clearly planning to empty the cupboard in order to give it a try.

The rebuild is going to be pretty nasty. But we knew that going in. Frankly, the team that won two cups was a LOT better than your average cup-winning team, and it's unlikely we will ever get to that level again. But even those teams had trouble getting goals from anyone off the top line. IMO, that's not a roster problem. It's baked into the system, because we have literally had that issue for a decade.

 

[DFC]

The Wings were pretty much able to extend their elite status because they hit with late picks Zetterberg and Datsyuk. Eventually the late picks stopped working out so well, and ended up needing a larger rebuild.

I don't really see how we can decide how we'll rebuild in the future. Too much will be different. Will we have a basically good team, and be able to retool? Will we need to sell everything and try to get some top picks? What will our organizational strengths be? Will we have a generational head scout? What will ownership want?

Detroit was able to benefit from scouting the (then) under scouted Sweden and Russia. Where are those areas now? Probably German-speaking countries. Somebody, somewhere, is getting undervalued.

Agreed. Detroit in the early 2000s and TB in the early Yzerman years benefited from being ahead of the curve in terms of drafting. Yzerman put less emphasis on size than other GMs, and pretty much no emphasis whatsoever on country of origin. But other teams have caught up now, and they're all doing pretty much the same thing, including over-cooking their prospects (a trick we stole from those early 2000s Wings teams, who were no stranger to the 25 year-old rookie).

IMO the retooling started after the second cup. That was the first year we started losing players we wanted to keep, and started trying to replace them on the fly with younger options. We've been paying out the nose in draft picks in order to do that, but you have to give JBB credit for icing a contending team despite the heavy losses we've taken.

Odds are always against us to win a cup. Even in the cup years, when we had, I say again, a MUCH better team than your average cup team, the odds were always against us just like every other team that has won a cup. But we still have a Hall of Fame core in their prime, so we have to squeeze every bit of juice we can out of that. Just like Detroit did, just like Chicago did, and just the Pens are doing right now. We're gonna go through all of those stages too. But while we're on top we are gonna try to hold on as long as we can. Anything else would be a fireable offense.

 

[Stormbreaker]

 

[DFC]

Jon Cooper, confirmed HF reader.

...Tomorrow night he will go back to Cirelli/Stamkos...

Jon Cooper, confirmed HF troll.

 

[Point21]

Holy shit balls, Colton and Paul in the top 6???? Is Coop sick or something?????

 

[JFleegs]

These lines are beautiful

 

[DFC]

I feel like Coop is getting ready for the playoffs now. I don't see how he can play Stamkos with Cirelli if Cirelli is going to be in a shutdown role. He knows that.

 

[LightningStrikes]

I feel like Coop is getting ready for the playoffs now. I don't see how he can play Stamkos with Cirelli if Cirelli is going to be in a shutdown role. He knows that.

I fear he goes back to 21-71-17 once the playoffs start.

 

[Felonious Python]

Agreed. Detroit in the early 2000s and TB in the early Yzerman years benefited from being ahead of the curve in terms of drafting. Yzerman put less emphasis on size than other GMs, and pretty much no emphasis whatsoever on country of origin. But other teams have caught up now, and they're all doing pretty much the same thing, including over-cooking their prospects (a trick we stole from those early 2000s Wings teams, who were no stranger to the 25 year-old rookie).

IMO the retooling started after the second cup. That was the first year we started losing players we wanted to keep, and started trying to replace them on the fly with younger options. We've been paying out the nose in draft picks in order to do that, but you have to give JBB credit for icing a contending team despite the heavy losses we've taken.

Odds are always against us to win a cup. Even in the cup years, when we had, I say again, a MUCH better team than your average cup team, the odds were always against us just like every other team that has won a cup. But we still have a Hall of Fame core in their prime, so we have to squeeze every bit of juice we can out of that. Just like Detroit did, just like Chicago did, and just the Pens are doing right now. We're gonna go through all of those stages too. But while we're on top we are gonna try to hold on as long as we can. Anything else would be a fireable offense.

The cap restrictions may have been a bit of a blessing. If the cap stopped mattering after the first cup, we'd have an older team with Coleman, Goodrow, Palat, McD (Gourde may have still been lost in the expansion draft).

We wouldn't have Hagel or Paul. We might not have Jeannot.

 

[Stammertime91]

Haha. Cooper is like, someone on HF mentioned these lines like 3 weeks ago and now I'll try them.

 

[DFC]

I fear he goes back to 21-71-17 once the playoffs start.

I think that's a given vs. Toronto. I don't know why you fear it. It's probably the only way we keep Marner and Matthews from eating us alive.

 

[Zwui21]

OMG IT'S HAPPENING

 

[RussianGuyovich]

oh my goodness those are my forward lines i expect a sweet sweet check from the organization and also a little more respect around here.

 

[These Are The Days]

And we've been to three finals in a row.

It could be four. Who even knows with this group? For all we know Tanner Jeannot is Justin Williams. But as for player development? I don't think I'm ever gonna like it. We wanna take our sweet ass time with young players and then hurry them at the NHL level. We may be patient to a degree but more often than not we trade them because they're an asset to use for a more finished product. And the ones who are NHL ready we wanna turn into Cirelli. And since we can't do it anymore we're just blowing all our prospects and draft capital on it. We aren't going to have many new names come up for the next few years.

In the end, we have to just let guys be good at what they are good at.

oh my goodness those are my forward lines i expect a sweet sweet check from the organization and also a little more respect around here.

Here you go king. This is your thanks from the Lightning

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qa4AAOSwvB1ghg~J/s-l1600.jpg

My stupid ass phone doesn't let me embed pictures like normal

 

[Master P]

 

[RussianGuyovich]

Here you go king. This is your thanks from the Lightning

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qa4AAOSwvB1ghg~J/s-l1600.jpg

My stupid ass phone doesn't let me embed pictures like normal

mods, please make this crown be in the background of every post i make from here on out as i am, as illustrated by the crown, the argue king.

 

[DFC]

It could be four. Who even knows with this group? For all we know Tanner Jeannot is Justin Williams. But as for player development? I don't think I'm ever gonna like it. We wanna take our sweet ass time with young players and then hurry them at the NHL level. We may be patient to a degree but more often than not we trade them because they're an asset to use for a more finished product. And the ones who are NHL ready we wanna turn into Cirelli. And since we can't do it anymore we're just blowing all our prospects and draft capital on it. We aren't going to have many new names come up for the next few years.

In the end, we have to just let guys be good at what they are good at.



Here you go king. This is your thanks from the Lightning

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qa4AAOSwvB1ghg~J/s-l1600.jpg

My stupid ass phone doesn't let me embed pictures like normal

I think you might just be really impatient, and you like the idea of young players being really good. But really, the thing that made us a lot better between 2015 and 2020 was we got older and more mature, and the young players on the team played like 30 year-olds.

I think Toronto's going through the same thing now. They're getting older, and realizing how much they want to win, rather than score pretty goals.

 

[These Are The Days]

I think you might just be really impatient, and you like the idea of young players being really good. But really, the thing that made us a lot better between 2015 and 2020 was we got older and more mature, and the young players on the team played like 30 year-olds.

I think Toronto's going through the same thing now. They're getting older, and realizing how much they want to win, rather than score pretty goals.

Not necessarily. I just hate when dudes put 3 years into Syracuse and after 40 games its like "whelp"

 

[DFC]

Not necessarily. I just hate when dudes put 3 years into Syracuse and after 40 games its like "whelp"

We've definitely made mistakes, but they've been fairly minor. We've chosen proven talent over unproven talent. But there's another side to that. Guys like Gourde and JAM were on their way to being career minor leaguers before our development staff got hold of them and turned them into late bloomers.

I think you're putting way too much weight into Taylor Raddysh's success with Chicago. Some guys do well on bottom-feeding teams where there is minimal competition for a scoring role. He's older than Hagel and not as good. He's developing into a real NHLer, but you have to give up guys like that if you want real players coming back.

Tyler Johnson is having a decent offensive season too (50 point pace, per 82). That doesn't mean he would be able to do that on a team that isn't forced to put him in a scoring role. Valerie Bure made a career of this kind of thing.