Minor League Thread 2017-18: Part VIII

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eco's bones

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Jul 21, 2005
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When Zborovskiy's been called up to Hartford---he's had a hard time sticking. Beacon's game reports pretty much critiqued his skating hard. That's been something that has dogged Sergei and pretty much been an ongoing critique of him as a prospect since the day we drafted him. Year after year it's been commented upon. Players can get away with things in the CHL that they can't get away with in the AHL and it appears to me here is where Zborovskiy has hit the proverbial wall. If your skating sucks you're not going to be an NHL player. The NHL is only getting faster and IMO I'm not even sure that Zborovskiy is going to have an AHL career let alone an NHL one.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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You need to be a good hockey player, not have certain attributes to play in the NHL. The best teams win because they play the best players, not ones with certain attributes. But I do think the point being made applies to the Rangers. Gorton has shown in his decision-making that he prefers skill and skating on the backend to defense. Look how bad our defense is this season, and who's getting chances. Gilmour and DeAngelo get free rein to make calamitous defense error after calamitous defensive error, and they keep getting chances. A player like Graves who can actually defend is traded, despite outplaying these guys at the AHL level.
 

Let Blaine Die

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You need to be a good hockey player, not have certain attributes to play in the NHL. The best teams win because they play the best players, not ones with certain attributes. But I do think the point being made applies to the Rangers. Gorton has shown in his decision-making that he prefers skill and skating on the backend to defense. Look how bad our defense is this season, and who's getting chances. Gilmour and DeAngelo get free rein to make calamitous defense error after calamitous defensive error, and they keep getting chances. A player like Graves who can actually defend is traded, despite outplaying these guys at the AHL level.

Yep like Lindgren, the prospect who he just traded for and signed to an ELC. Total shit show in his own zone and can only play in the opponent's half.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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Yep like Lindgren, the prospect who he just traded for and signed to an ELC. Total **** show in his own zone and can only play in the opponent's half.

Hopefully thats a correction to what he's shown before that, but its not just on the prospect side of things, also the NHL team. He revamped the defense completely this offseason, and it was a disaster, the main reason we didn't make the playoffs, and had to sell off our best players. How little blame Gorton gets for this is baffling. Everyone always just wants to blame AV or the system or the players, and I agree they all deserve blame, but absolving the GM when his moves on the backend so far have been awful, aside from the Pionk signing, doesn't make sense.
 

nyr2k2

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I just provided the Adam Herman piece as something relevant to the discussion from someone who produces a lot of interesting content. If anyone believes him to be biased, that's fine. I myself said I don't always like or agree with Herman. However, he does have some legitimate sources and I don't have any reason to doubt the stats or quote he provided.

Also, not sure who bases their opinions of players off Herman's rankings. I don't. My opinion of Zborovskiy is based off of my own viewings and inferences. I actually found that article for the first time today, when I was trying to find a quote on Barron.
 

GeorgeKaplan

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Hopefully thats a correction to what he's shown before that, but its not just on the prospect side of things, also the NHL team. He revamped the defense completely this offseason, and it was a disaster, the main reason we didn't make the playoffs, and had to sell off our best players. How little blame Gorton gets for this is baffling. Everyone always just wants to blame AV or the system or the players, and I agree they all deserve blame, but absolving the GM when his moves on the backend so far have been awful, aside from the Pionk signing, doesn't make sense.
He swapped out Girardi for Shattenkirk in the offseason, I’d hardly say that’s revamping the defense completely.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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He swapped out Girardi for Shattenkirk in the offseason, I’d hardly say that’s revamping the defense completely.

He signed Smith to an awful deal, he traded for DeAngelo as a major piece of the Stepan deal, he put dead money on the cap getting rid of a player who is currently playing well as a top 4 D for the best team in the league.
 

GeorgeKaplan

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He signed Smith to an awful deal, he traded for DeAngelo as a major piece of the Stepan deal, he put dead money on the cap getting rid of a player who is currently playing well as a top 4 D for the best team in the league.
He traded for smith last season who was actually good the last leg of the season and into the playoffs, I thought he paid him too much money but it wasn’t a terrible idea to resign him. As much as you’re rallying for defensive defensemen, it’s just as important to get offense from the back end, DeAngelo was brought in to eventually be the long term PPQB. He’s still a work in progress and he has progressed this year.
Girardi isn’t the reason Tampa is a top team in the league, not even close. he has been terrible for years here, he absolutely warranted getting bought out
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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He traded for smith last season who was actually good the last leg of the season and into the playoffs, I thought he paid him too much money but it wasn’t a terrible idea to resign him. As much as you’re rallying for defensive defensemen, it’s just as important to get offense from the back end, DeAngelo was brought in to eventually be the long term PPQB. He’s still a work in progress and he has progressed this year.
Girardi isn’t the reason Tampa is a top team in the league, not even close. he has been terrible for years here, he absolutely warranted getting bought out

Thats how you rationalize it, but we have one of the worst defenses in the NHL. I don't think all the blame should go to AV's system, I think thats ignoring a big part of the problem. You can blame the players as well, but if you are going to do that, the point has be made that the defense right now is completely different now than a year ago. Gorton is the one who made those changes, so he deserves credit/blame for those transactions.
 

GeorgeKaplan

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Thats how you rationalize it, but we have one of the worst defenses in the NHL. I don't think all the blame should go to AV's system, I think thats ignoring a big part of the problem. You can blame the players as well, but if you are going to do that, the point has be made that the defense right now is completely different now than a year ago. Gorton is the one who made those changes, so he deserves credit/blame for those transactions.
I see it as we’ve had a bad defense for years, but no one wants/wanted to admit it. Tortorella made it seem better than it was on paper, AV has made it worse than it is on paper
 
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Phoicon

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Thats how you rationalize it, but we have one of the worst defenses in the NHL. I don't think all the blame should go to AV's system, I think thats ignoring a big part of the problem. You can blame the players as well, but if you are going to do that, the point has be made that the defense right now is completely different now than a year ago. Gorton is the one who made those changes, so he deserves credit/blame for those transactions.

I see your point, but at the same time, he added Pionk and Shattenkirk for free. With Smith, I know you say you dissented, but there was broad consensus that he was a good pick-up prior to this season - even with some advanced statistics supporting that claim. We also added Bereglazov.

What could he, realistically, have done differently?

If it was his mistake, he has moved soon to rectify it by adding a couple young two-way defenders via trades this deadline.
 
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SnowblindNYR

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He signed Smith to an awful deal, he traded for DeAngelo as a major piece of the Stepan deal, he put dead money on the cap getting rid of a player who is currently playing well as a top 4 D for the best team in the league.

They're not the best team in the league because of their D, much less because of Girardi.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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I see your point, but at the same time, he added Pionk and Shattenkirk for free. With Smith, I know you say you dissented, but there was broad consensus that he was a good pick-up prior to this season - even with some advanced statistics supporting that claim. We also added Bereglazov.

What could he, realistically, have done differently?

If it was his mistake, he has moved soon to rectify it by adding a couple young two-way defenders via trades this deadline.

You say he added Shattenkirk for free but that's not true, he's not on the NHL minimum, not a two way contract, not able to be cut for no cap penalty at any time. We have a late 20's win-now player with 3 years left on his deal when the team probably won't be a contender for another 3 years. We could theoretically trade him, but does he want to be traded? He signed here for a discount, seems to want to play at home more than anything. So what does it even matter that we got him on a discount?

I was completely against the Smith signing and you can go back and check that. Detroit fans warned us about Smith. Just because some who hadn't watched the guy play for more than two months liked the signing doesn't mean it made sense, and whether or not it made sense, it's looking very bad now. The GM needs to be judged on results, that's one awful result right now.

He's responsible for the Girardi buyout. Going to be dead money on the cap for years. Once again, whether anyone thought it made sense or not, it has to be judged on results. This team is not competitive so Girardi's play would have been irrelevant and he's also having a good season.

DeAngelo was a major part of the Stepan deal. So far, I don't think he looks like an NHL'er. There are other minor things here or there, not giving Bereglazov any chance to make the team, trading Graves before you gave him a chance in the NHL, but so far, I think we've seen Gorton do a very bad job in constructing the defense. The results are there of that with the NHL team. Hopefully he does a better job with that, but so far I don't trust his ability to construct a defense.
 
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SnowblindNYR

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To me "defensive defenseman" nowadays that are successful are the Rangers' version of Stralman. Girardi is a player from a bygone era. Doesn't matter that he's playing better on a better team in a better system. I'd also rather gamble on skills on the D rather than a Dan Girardi. The book is not near shut on Tony DeAngelo.
 
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Phoicon

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You say he added Shattenkirk for free but that's not true, he's not on the NHL minimum, not a two way contract, not able to be cut for no cap penalty at any time. We have a late 20's win-now player with 3 years left on his deal when the team probably won't be a contender for another 3 years. We could theoretically trade him, but does he want to be traded? He signed here for a discount, seems to want to play at home more than anything. So what does it even matter that we got him on a discount?

I was completely against the Smith signing and you can go back and check that. Detroit fans warned us about Smith. Just because some who hadn't watched the guy play for more than two months liked the signing doesn't mean it made sense, and whether or not it made sense, it's looking very bad now. The GM needs to be judged on results, that's one awful result right now.

He's responsible for the Girardi buyout. Going to be dead money on the cap for years. Once again, whether anyone thought it made sense or not, it has to be judged on results. This team is not competitive so Girardi's play would have been irrelevant and he's also having a good season.

DeAngelo was a major part of the Stepan deal. So far, I don't think he looks like an NHL'er. There are other minor things here or there, not giving Bereglazov any chance to make the team, trading Graves before you gave him a chance in the NHL, but so far, I think we've seen Gorton do a very bad job in constructing the defense. The results are there of that with the NHL team. Hopefully he does a better job with that, but so far I don't trust his ability to construct a defense.

I don't know about DeAngelo, he certainly is not showing the offensive brilliance expected of him and I wondered why we traded for him same as you. But he is showing nice break out ability, that the likes of Del Zotto never had and moves the puck up the ice better than any of our other players currently. I would like to see him get some time on the PP1 unit.
 
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Ola

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Great posts, but HFD are interesting nowadays and most post on that team is drowned in Girardi/Stralman talk. ;)

//Thread Hitler
 

eco's bones

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Jul 21, 2005
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Elmira NY
You need to be a good hockey player, not have certain attributes to play in the NHL. The best teams win because they play the best players, not ones with certain attributes. But I do think the point being made applies to the Rangers. Gorton has shown in his decision-making that he prefers skill and skating on the backend to defense. Look how bad our defense is this season, and who's getting chances. Gilmour and DeAngelo get free rein to make calamitous defense error after calamitous defensive error, and they keep getting chances. A player like Graves who can actually defend is traded, despite outplaying these guys at the AHL level.

The one essential attribute though that every player needs to have to be an NHL player is skating. You don't have that---you've got no chance and that is Zborovskiy's problem. He either finds a way to improve on that area or he is done. He can be a stay at home steady D and that's fine but he's got to improve his skating even so.
 
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