Speculation: Offseason Thread #13: Running out of title ideas (Mod post #71)

[Avery16]

training camp cant begin soon enough

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

I think we could try these two units with different set-ups for the two PP's.

PP1:

Net: Nash
Slot: Kreider
Right Wall: McDonagh
Left Wall: Stepan
Central Point: Buch

PP2:

Net: Hayes
Right Wall: Zucc
Left Wall: Zibanejad
Left Point: Miller
Right Point: Skjei

 

[KreiderHouseRules*]

PP1 looks good but no shooters.

PP2 loos great but I think we'll see Zibanejad on the 1st PP unit in the Oveckin spot

 

[KreiderHouseRules*]

First PP unit:
Zibanejad Kreider Zuccarello
Stepan Buchvich

Second PP unit:

Miller Hayes Nash
Zibanejad/McIlrath McDonagh

 

[RangerBoy]

Training camp begins one week later this season because of the World Cup of Hockey.

The WJC showcase was interesting. The NHL Network did a great job picking up the TSN feed. There are some good players eligible for the 2017 draft. The Rangers have their first and hopefully Gorton can add at least one more pick in the first 2 rounds for next June. The Rangers don't have their 2nd. It was also a chance to see the players already drafted play for their countries.

Traverse City also begins one week later. The Rangers should have a better team than last year.

The NHL Prospect Tournament returns to Traverse City for the 18th season, running from Friday, Sept. 16 through Tuesday, Sept. 20. The eight-team field consists of prospects from the Red Wings, Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild, New York Rangers and St. Louis Blues.

Over the tournament’s history, 522 players have moved on to play in at least one NHL game, including 24 players who played for Detroit in 2015-16: Justin Abdelkader, Joakim Andersson, Andreas Athanasiou, Pavel Datsyuk, Jonathan Ericsson, Landon Ferraro, Darren Helm, Jimmy Howard, Tomas Jurco, Jakub Kindl, Niklas Kronwall, Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Alexey Marchenko, Petr Mrazek, Tomas Nosek, Gustav Nyquist, Xavier Ouellet, Teemu Pulkkinen, Kyle Quincey, Riley Sheahan, Brendan Smith, Tomas Tatar and Henrik Zetterberg.

The tournament will be divided into two four-team divisions, and teams will play each team in their division in a round-robin format before a crossover on the final day of the tournament. The first-place finishers in each division will meet for the Matthew Wuest Memorial Cup on Tuesday, Sept. 20. The tournament’s championship trophy was renamed prior to last year’s tournament in honor of Wuest, known for his work on the website CapGeek.com as well as his exclusive coverage and statistical archiving of the NHL Prospect Tournament on RedWingsCentral.com, spanning back to the inaugural tournament in 1998. Wuest passed away in March 2015 after succumbing to a two-year battle with colon cancer.

http://redwings.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=886813

 

[UAGoalieGuy]

training camp cant begin soon enough

August 15 can't come soon enough so we can put the whole Vesey thing to bed. 8 More days!

 

[RangerBoy]

Vesey can't talk to teams until August 16. The teams are meeting with Vesey at his agent's office in Massachusetts over the course of two days. Vesey will decide after the meetings. He meets with teams on the 16th and 17th. Vesey decides after that.

 

[Idlerlee]

I do.

Considering he's had one complete season under his belt, we don't know what kind of player he will be or what kind of production we can get.

He can just as easily replicate last years numbers, or improve on them as slide back to a more pedestrian number.

I'm more than willing to let the season play out and let him prove he can't repeat last years numbers than make the assumption that he won't. Especially considering we have no basis of a norm. Maybe last year IS his norm. What happens if he slides next year? Is that telling us anything different than what he did last year tells us? I can't say that it does. The Advanced stats can't either. All it says is what he was that particular year.

Maybe last year is the outlier in his career. Maybe last year is his norm and a pedestrian shooting % is the outlier. Until we see a better sample size (more than 2 full seasons) we can't know and advanced stats can't tell us what we can expect from Miller or any younger player on an average.

I made a post about this explaining why he wont that got promptly ignored by everyone. But just to repeat myself: There is a reason outliers arent averages: They are too high. Miller with his current set of involvements pr season wont replicate his % based on league averages.

 

[pld459666]

I made a post about this explaining why he wont that got promptly ignored by everyone. But just to repeat myself: There is a reason outliers arent averages: They are too high. Miller with his current set of involvements pr season wont replicate his % based on league averages.

but he's not played enough complete seasons to point to any one season as the outlier.

Last year was his 1st full season. Anything prior to that can be used obviously, but skewers the numbers due to the fact that role, linemates, lack of confidence, getting yoyo'd to the minors and back, getting benched regularlyplay a role in everything he did.

Last year is the first season you can truly use as a basis for trying to determine what kind of shooting % he will have. And since that is WAY to small a sample size, I don't think you can fairly calculate what kind of season he will have next year or beyond.

I believe to get a better handle on what we can expect from him annually in terms of shooting %, we have to get more than 2 seasons under his belt to get a true average from him. Maybe last year is the outlier, the other two seasons will bear that out. Maybe last year is the norm. The next 2 seasons will certainly bear that out as well.

 

[SA16]

You just regress towards the league average as it is better than doing nothing. After his first year should we have expected Prucha could continue to shoot like 26% since that's the only data we had?

Re: PP:
I would play Stepan and Zibanejad both on the first unit and give that unit like 75% of the ice time. Just gives a lot more flexibility with two right handed shots. And I do not really want Nash on the top PP unit and he is historically very poor on the PP. I'd use something like Stepan Zibanejad Zucc Kreider McDonagh

I would also play Klein on the second unit over Skjei as Klein has repeatedly demonstrated rather elite even strength production and has just never even been given a chance on the powerplay.

 

[Riche16]

I think we could try these two units with different set-ups for the two PP's.

PP1:

Net: Nash
Slot: Kreider
Right Wall: McDonagh
Left Wall: Stepan
Central Point: Buch

PP2:

Net: Hayes
Right Wall: Zucc
Left Wall: Zibanejad
Left Point: Miller
Right Point: Skjei

First PP unit:
Zibanejad Kreider Zuccarello
Stepan Buchvich

Second PP unit:

Miller Hayes Nash
Zibanejad/McIlrath McDonagh

So WHEN we turn the puck over Buch defends?

 

[GAGLine]

I don't expect Miller to have as high of a shooting percentage, but I also expect, or at least hope, that he will get more shots, which should enable him to match or exceed last year's numbers.

 

[Vinny DeAngelo]

Has anymore word on vesey come out? Or is it the same he's going to Toronto or Boston but all 30 teams want him nonsense from June?

 

[Inferno]

Has anymore word on vesey come out? Or is it the same he's going to Toronto or Boston but all 30 teams want him nonsense from June?

still some time...if i were to handicap the places he'd go play i'd think...

1)Buffalo
2)Boston
3)Toronto
4)Chicago
5)Rangers


Thats just my gut...but i could easily see him choosing us. We've got a youngish group of forwards, we have more than enough cash to give him the max contract, we treat our players better than literally every team in the NHL, we've been a winning team for a long time, and even though we look to be on the downswing, i think we should be competitive next season despite not being a championship caliber team (only Chicago can definitively say they are championship caliber on that team..and most of us agree theyve also gotten worse)

 

[Brooklyn Rangers Fan]

still some time...if i were to handicap the places he'd go play i'd think...

1)Buffalo
2)Boston
3)Toronto
4)Chicago
5)Rangers


Thats just my gut...but i could easily see him choosing us. We've got a youngish group of forwards, we have more than enough cash to give him the max contract, we treat our players better than literally every team in the NHL, we've been a winning team for a long time, and even though we look to be on the downswing, i think we should be competitive next season despite not being a championship caliber team (only Chicago can definitively say they are championship caliber on that team..and most of us agree theyve also gotten worse)

I don't see Buffalo at the top of the list at all. They traded for his rights specifically to avoid this scenario. Then, he drags them through it anyway... just to then pick them? Doesn't make sense at all.

I mean, talk about getting off to a bad start with your new employers...

 

[Avery16]

August 15 can't come soon enough so we can put the whole Vesey thing to bed. 8 More days!

Just need something more to talk about than Miller's advanced stats

 

[bigdog16]

1) Chicago- will be a good spot to juice his numbers up in order to get a fat second contract. Plus will contend for a Stanley Cup. Only downside is he is far from family and friends, which he has noted is important to him.

2) Boston- hometown boy, a dream come true for the kid. But can he handle the pressure of being a local and in the limelight in his first professional season(s)?

3) Rangers- will have a solid pitch at Vesey. Max contract, close enough to home where family and friends can see him, but far enough where he will need to hold himself responsible. Downside is many look at us as "on the downswing".

4) Toronto- dad works as a scout and brother was a late round pick to them, but other than that it doesnt really seem like a logical place for him to play. Don't think it'd be a smart place to start his career off

Buffalo doesn't look to be in the mix, otherwise he would've signed by now. Sleepers are NJ and NYI

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

So WHEN we turn the puck over Buch defends?

He'll set up a lot more chances than turnovers. Buch can run a PP. We don't have a player on our team with the ability to QB a PP that Buch has.

 

[Mac n Gs]

Go back and read RangerBoy's post about Vesey and the interested teams' financial situations. Buffalo and the Rangers are in the best position to pay him his bonuses now and give him a bigger second contract.

 

[RangerBoy]

Chicago and Toronto have cap issues with Vesey getting MAX bonuses of $2,850,000

They can handle the $925,000 salary. Those MAX bonuses are counted in the $73M cap. 7.5% bonus cushion but it's a problem when the bonus cushion isn't enough.

Rangers and Boston. Does Vesey want to begin his NHL career playing at home?

Vesey already meet with Buffalo.

“I have a couple of teams in mind, but my dad’s said he is going to let me make the decision,’’ said Vesey. “I think that’s fair. I am 23 years old at this point, so I am a man on my own and . . . I think I’d like to be in the Northeast a little bit.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...-nhl-future/d0xIzgGvkAJD4kBOoI4dgK/story.html



2nd contract is just two years away.

 

[RangerBoy]

Go back and read RangerBoy's post about Vesey and the interested teams' financial situations. Buffalo and the Rangers are in the best position to pay him his bonuses now and give him a bigger second contract.

Boston can pay him. The Bruins are on older team. They have Bergeron. Krejci. Backes. All of them have long-term contracts. They are all over 30. They are going to sign Marchard to a long term contract and will be 29 at the start of the new contract. They will have so much invested in a group of older forwards. It will hurt the team from being competitive. The Bruins have some good talent in their system but those 4 forwards....

The Rangers have their issues but they don't those type of commitments. So many of them. The Rangers have Staal and Girardi. I think Nash will have a bounce back season and it's only two seasons.

I am biased. I think the Rangers are the team for Vesey.

 

[smoneil]

You just regress towards the league average as it is better than doing nothing. After his first year should we have expected Prucha could continue to shoot like 26% since that's the only data we had?

The Prucha example is a tough one. There really wasn't a clear way to predict his fall because his shooting percentage was the result of all the extra space players had under the new rules. Half the league can point to that season as an outlier "career year" (it's a big part of Eric Staal's reputation in fact). Nobody could have known that the new rules, within a couple of seasons, would drift back towards pre-lockout style hockey.

Miller is an interesting situation. Both sides have made good points (player still developing, will likely be more assertive vs. player with unsustainable shooting percentage). Regardless of which narrative plays out, I think Miller will still be a good middle-six player to have on the team.

Re: PP:
I would play Stepan and Zibanejad both on the first unit and give that unit like 75% of the ice time. Just gives a lot more flexibility with two right handed shots. And I do not really want Nash on the top PP unit and he is historically very poor on the PP. I'd use something like Stepan Zibanejad Zucc Kreider McDonagh

I would also play Klein on the second unit over Skjei as Klein has repeatedly demonstrated rather elite even strength production and has just never even been given a chance on the powerplay.

Agreed on both points. I'd love to see a second PP unit loaded with speed. Try and wear down the PK with a stacked first unit and, if they don't pot one, try and overwhelm them with a speedy change of pace. Could be very effective.

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

The Miller discussion is interesting. As one of his biggest supporters since he's been drafted, I honestly don't know what to expect out of him next year. The points regarding his shot % are completely valid, it'll be tough for him to hit 20 goals again unless he starts shooting the puck more.

That said, I think we'll see him pick up more assists next year. I've always felt that he was more of a playmaker than a goal scorer. I would hope he can put up around 16 goals and 30+ assists, hopefully pushing 50 points. I would like to see him get a bigger role on the PP as well. If he can score more 5 on 4 he should definitely be able to put up 20 this season.

 

[Irishguy42]

What time do training camps and whatnot start for the World Cup?

Excited to hear about how our boys are doing.

 

[Avery16]

The Miller discussion is interesting. As one of his biggest supporters since he's been drafted, I honestly don't know what to expect out of him next year. The points regarding his shot % are completely valid, it'll be tough for him to hit 20 goals again unless he starts shooting the puck more.

That said, I think we'll see him pick up more assists next year. I've always felt that he was more of a playmaker than a goal scorer. I would hope he can put up around 16 goals and 30+ assists, hopefully pushing 50 points. I would like to see him get a bigger role on the PP as well. If he can score more 5 on 4 he should definitely be able to put up 20 this season.

Honestly, I expect Miller to be one of our most effective forwards this season