With Hanzal I'm more willing to risk waiting to the deadline to trade him than I am willing to risk a long-term extension. I feel like the risk of missing out on trade deadline assets is less scary than the risk of ending up with a new fat contract ending up on the IR season after season.
With Pittsburgh signing Matt Cullen, I'm hoping we are all over Jim Rutherford about acquiring Eric Fehr. Very nice insurance policy. If Hanzal is healthy, and Strome and Dvorak are both ready for prime-time, than Fehr can simply slide to wing and push White down to 13th forward. If Strome and/or Dvorak aren't ready for prime time and/or Hanzal can't stay healthy, than we have another veteran guy who can fill in at center if needed. Doesn't hurt that he was a top PKer on a top PK team, either.
Domi - Hanzal - Duclair
McGinn - Strome - Vrbata
Rieder - Dvorak - Doan
Nook - Richardson - Fehr
White
Could work. Fehr's contract is a little concerning. Cash doesn't matter (2 mil) just the fact that he's signed this year and next.
Also - General Fanager shows the Pens as 3M+ over the cap. That gets sorted out once they put Dupuis (3.75) on LTIR. Still, they're dangerously close to the cap after that. Like 500k. I'm sure they'd be happy to shed Fehr's 2M for dirt cheap.
Kinda rambly post:
I have very serious doubts that Richardson ever sees anything close to what amounts to traditional 4rd line minutes despite that being his obvious place from a theoretical offensive capability standpoint. In addition to being a Tippett guy he's also just flat out better than an 4C under normal circumstances.
That also leaves us without a front line penalty killing center unless Gaudet makes the roster; Richardson plays the PK but traditionally isn't the first option. Hanzal has transitioned more to an offensive role and I think it's pretty clear they prefer that. All this poses an interesting problem for the Dvorak/Strome situation.
Do they each have a spot to lose as is mostly looked at here and the Vermette dumping would indicate? Or are they competing for the same spot and the team is fully willing to ship Strome to Erie or Dvorak to the AHL?
I like Torrey Mitchell a lot as a player and wouldn't mind him bring brought in at all. That complicates the situation further though.
Unlike the "we're gonna be the Oilers" fear of playing too many rookies, I don't necessarily fear playing as many of the rookies/2nd years players as they have now based on the depth chart. The reason is the defense should be improved and that should help insulate the young players despite not being their forward linemates. So If they keep Dvorak/Strome up or even put in a Dauphin and Gaudet in there instead I think there's adequate insulation elsewhere from a development perspective.
I continue to worry about the PK but I think at this point that problem is unsolvable with current assets so from a net-gain perspective the team might be better off trying an offensive 4th line that plays more minutes. Instead of having a traditional 4th line that plays a good deal less minutes, right now it looks to me like we'll see a team that doesn't have an obvious first line. Even last year this was somewhat the case already but the 4th line had no talent. This year there's actually enough scoring talent to spread around and give that line more time.
So what we might see is no line that averages in excess of 17min ATOI and a 4th line that plays 13 instead of 10.
At least one thing can be said about this offseason compared to the last couple. It's not very predictable so at least it's interesting
im confused?
I'm confused too , normally I'm pretty well hardened in my opinions but right now I'm mostly
I lean toward thinking one Torrey Mitchell doesn't improve the PK enough to justify the loss of potential minutes to developing players. So I think I'd like to see them just try using those normally defensive oriented minutes differently and avoid the PK as much as possible.
Adding Mitchell doesn't cost Strome or Dvorak an everyday spot.
But if it doesn't, then trading for Mitchell also doesn't really help your concern about handing spots to Jr players? If they're willing to put him at wing it's impossible for me to imagine a scenario where Dvorak and Strome aren't 2 of the top 4Cs..
I feel like we're gift wrapping top NHL positions to totally unproven junior players, right now, and I hate it.
If Dvo/Strome can't hack it:
Domi-Hanzal-Duclair
McGinn-Strome/Dvo-Vrbata
Rieder-Richardson-Doan
Martinook-Mitchell-White
If you don't pick up Mitchell, it's White in that spot. Which I guess is okay but White's not really a center. Mitchell is a bonafide 4C and Richardson can be a 3C in a pinch.
I hope this is what you were looking for to some extent:I'd be curious to see our PK % and league rank across these different situations:
1) Good Mike Smith
2) Bad Mike Smith
3) Louie Domingue
That sounds like a pain to dredge up all those numbers, but my guess is that the PK looks decent for 1 and 3, and terrible for 2. If you're goalie can't stop the puck, the rest of the PK unit doesn't matter.
Ron Hextall agrees with you:
"I've said this over and over," Hextall said. "If you look at the history of the League, the biggest danger is putting a player in the National Hockey League too early rather than sending a guy back to junior that the public believes is too good for junior or he's going to stagnate in his development."
He's talking about Provorov here.
I think Maloney agreed with that stance too. He certainly learned his lesson after Boedker was rushed, Turris was rushed, and Mueller was probably rushed. Who's to say we wouldn't have already ****ed up Max Domi if he was right now about to enter his 4th NHL season?
I don't think anyone's being rushed here though, gifted a spot or not. Top 25 prospects who have 3 years of junior experience *should* make an NHL roster in the majority of cases.
I hope this is what you were looking for to some extent:
A couple of weeks ago I was getting a little frustrated with this off-season because it seems like the PK hasn't been significantly addressed in terms of coaching or players. I want to say for the past couple of seasons that DT has used goaltending as a scapegoat for the PK (anecdotely, I'm not suffering through all 82 post-game interviews). That didn't feel quite right to me.
There are 42 goalies that played 30 or more NHL games last season.
Mike Smith Even Strength Save %: .933 (5 of 42)
Mike Smith Save % When Shorthanded: .869 (23 of 42)
Louis Domingue Even Strength Save %: .925 (22 of 42)
Louis Domingue Save % When Shorthanded: .848 (38 of 42)
Unless both goaltenders just happen to have meltdowns when we lose a man, it's pretty alarming how far they drop down the rankings. I think the problem either comes back to who we have on the ice or coaching, maybe even both. I have to imagine our 508:09 minutes of PK time last season (1st in the NHL) doesn't help. I was looking at this stuff shortly before Vermette got bought-out, which made the move really surprising to me. I realize he wasn't as good as he once was, but now who plays center on the PK? Hopefully White can help fill the void. Or pray that Dvorak can kill a penalty in the NHL in his rookie season.
As far as the difference between Good Mike Smith and Bad Mike Smith having a correlation between the team's PK, I don't have data to present, but just by looking through his gamelog, it doesn't seem there is one. There were plenty of his below .900% stinkers where he did and didn't let in goals on the PK. And then there were his over .930 save % games late in the season where either all of the goals he let in that night were all scored even-strength or all on the PK.
Interesting, but not entirely related our 499:45 minutes of PP was also the most in the league. If my math is correct that means roughly 20-25% of the games we played last season were on some variety of special teams.
I'm a big fan of Gaudet as our 4C. He's the guy I circle when I look at who we could lose in an expansion draft.