GDT: #22 Blackhawks @ Sharks | 7:00pm PDT | NBCSN

[Pinkfloyd]

I'm sad that Wingels is getting singled out so much. I'm biased though so whatever. Honestly this is all of our bottom sixes first times learning a new NHL system. I'm willing to hold onto these guys for this season unless there is a deal for a top 4 d on the table. No reason to trade for another bottom pairing guy as we need depth there not more of the same.

I'd prefer to keep Wingels and ride him out of his struggles but there shouldn't be much of a difference between 3rd line and 4th line minutes when healthy. A Wingels on his game is a very valuable depth player to have. He's just not there right now.

 

[OrrNumber4]

If the talent was there to be a 2 way defensemen they would do it every season. Do you think the great 2 way players decided they would only do 1 aspect of the game? No they worked on both, and mastered both. Vlasic and braun both do not have that to there game. Vlasic is a lost cause to find it, just like it is a lost cause of trying to get thornton to shoot. Braun might have the chance, but he is close to proving it is a lost cause also.

Well, people thought it was a lost cause to get Thornton to play well defensively, and 12+ years into his NHL career, he made the change.

It certainly isn't probable, but it is possible. How many people thought that putting Burns up front or moving Marleau to the wing would be successful?

 

[OrrNumber4]

What Wingels is playing like right now is a 4th liner. Good wheels, yes. Decent hands? No, not really. Hard shot is up for debate but he's historically inaccurate with it. He's nothing special as a passer. Certainly good enough defensively and is physical but a lot of those traits are not unique to the spot he's in.

I think you are downplaying his skills. Niemi said he had the hardest shot on the team, and he's generally an "average" shooter in terms of accuracy. He's not a great passer, but he is an adequate passer and is willing to use that skill.

If I go up and down the forwards available on this team when healthy, he's a 4th liner. I would put Thornton, Marleau, Pavelski, Couture, Ward, Karlsson, Hertl, Donskoi, and Nieto ahead of Wingels and off the 4th line.

I get that Donskoi and Karlsson are flavours of the month, but even at the best he has shown, Nieto has equalled Wingels's best. Out of those four players, only Wingels has a history of decent NHL production. While I think that Donskoi could be better, Wingels has had stretches of looking like a top-6 forward and great lengths were he has been a top-9 forward...to say otherwise is simply revisionism. Karlsson has shown that he can play well with Thornton, and Nieto has had very brief flashes, but the bulk of their NHL play up to this point suggests they will be inferior players.

Also, to be fair about his production, he was good for those numbers when he was seeing time in the top six and not solely in the 3rd line role.

It wasn't like he had top-6 ice time the whole season...he was splitting time between the 2nd and 3rd lines...much like players like Nieto and Hertl.

If you see Hertl having a problem producing in the role he's in, Wingels isn't doing anything to help because he isn't producing either. Considering I saw Hertl play well on the 2nd line, I'm more inclined to believe it has something to do with meshing with Wingels' game rather than those like Marleau and Ward.

Wingels has shown the ability, time and time again, to mesh well with about anyone. He's not likely to have a Cheechoo-JT relationship, but he's managed to find decent chemistry with a whole bunch of linemates throughout his time in San Jose. Considering that history, I am more inclined to believe that both players are just individually struggling.

Producing at a 30+ point clip doesn't mean diddly. Did he actually produce 30 points? The answer is no for the last six seasons. Using injuries as an excuse for not doing so doesn't cut it because injuries will be a part of his career going forward in all likelihood.

What it means is that when he is playing, and on the ice, there is a player capable of a 30-point season on the ice; someone with those skills is on the ice.

And no, Braun and Demers were not similar defensemen as prospects. Demers was always more offensively-inclined and had better vision and Braun was always more sound defensively.

Well, that is just historical revisionism. Braun and Demers were both considered offensive defensemen with holes defensively. Braun remodeled his game, and was able to get a full-time NHL job tied to Vlasic's hip, but the offensive skills and inclination used to be there. Again, he has good hockey sense, a very hard and accurate shot, is an above-average passer, and is a good skater. On top of that, he has the frame and size.

As for Vlasic, he had one great offensive year in juniors.

Out of three seasons, yes

He didn't make the big club based on his offensive prowess.

No, but Tim Burke had said that the organization saw him as a two-way defenseman when they drafted him.

The Sharks did not draft him based off of that year either because that came after his draft.

Right, because drafting only involves looking at the here and now. No predictive elements.

The talent was never there unless you surrounded him with great offensive players that would dominate their time on ice. That could happen in the Q but not in the NHL. People thought he could be like Lidstrom because he played similarly to him but the thing that was missing and was always missing that never made that come true was his offensive game.

Except that those skills, the potential, was always evident. Am I the only one who remembers how, in 2009, he actually was a good PP quarterback? Back then, thinking of him as a guy playing on a team's 2nd PP unit wasn't a crazy idea...

Not having the shot is a pretty important thing to not have when you want to be compared to Lidstrom. A big chunk of Lidstrom's offensive game came because he had a great shot and could utilize it in so many ways to produce offense.

Lidstrom had an accurate shot and could find the lanes very well. His shot was far from hard. Vlasic has the brains to find the lanes and has an accurate shot as well. Not at Lidstrom's level, but more than enough that 30+ points should not at all be a problem.

Also, having great anticipation defensively doesn't mean that it will or should translate into great anticipation offensively. They are two different beasts and it's easier to anticipate defensively than offensively especially as a d-man.

They are two different beasts with a lot of similarity. You'd be surprised how great hockey sense and positioning translate across both disciplines...there is a reason why people say Alexander Semin is an underrated penalty killer.

It is like playing tennis to playing table tennis. They are different games, but the skills are very transferrable.

 

[Barrie22]

But yet those 30 point seasons are hard to come by. This is not some 2nd year defensemen we are talking about. We are talking about a 10 year veteran. If he has not figured it out yet he never will.

There is nothing you can say or bring up that will prove that vlasic should be able to hit 30 points every year. Since on ice where it actually matters has proven time and time again that vlasic is an absolutely garbage offensive player.

 

[Barrie22]

Well, people thought it was a lost cause to get Thornton to play well defensively, and 12+ years into his NHL career, he made the change.

It certainly isn't probable, but it is possible. How many people thought that putting Burns up front or moving Marleau to the wing would be successful?

People that understand that wing is a lot easier then center and defense.

I know nobody here understands this no matter how many times it gets told to them, but thornton was never a bad defensive player. It is the 1st thing he learned when he made the jump from ohl to the nhl. Literally thorntons 1st 3 seasons in the nhl was learning the defensive side of the game before finally being moved up to the 2nd line and asked to be more offenisve.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Making it difficult to respond to you as per usual with your choppy formatting. If Wingels had the hardest shot and was average in terms of accuracy, he'd be in the top six as a scorer. Niemi saying it doesn't really hold much weight because chances are the shots he got off in practice were harder than the shots he gets off in the game. Everyone in the NHL is a willing passer and everyone in the top nine is at least that as well. It's not really a point in his favor.

I don't care what Wingels' best was. I don't even care if he's overall a better player than a few of those guys. I prefer guys with complimentary skills to the important ones they'd be playing with. I would value Nieto's superior defensive and passing ability over Wingels' physicality. I would value Karlsson's superior off-puck play to Wingels' mostly better overall play. Donskoi is probably the closest one to being knocked off because he hasn't really found his groove with anyone yet but he's already outproducing Wingels in less games and less ice time. But quite honestly, I think Wingels would fit better in a 4th line role with Tierney and Goodrow or Torres if he gets back in the lineup than he would anyone on the top three.

As for his ice time, he was doing more of it than anyone else especially more than Hertl and Nieto. Let's not pretend like it was more or less equal...it wasn't.

I'm not inclined that individuals are struggling is the entirety of it when Hertl's struggles coincided with him being put down to the 3rd line with Wingels. Wingels has been struggling all year. Hertl was not until then. But even with Wingels having decent chemistry with most, he isn't now and at this point there are better fits than him for the top three lines, imo.

Wouldn't having those skills produce the actual points rather than making a reach like you are? I would suggest so considering we're not talking about developing players at this point. We're talking about finished products and it's been a while since Martin was a 30+ point player so his skills have likely diminished in that regard.

As for Demers-Braun, you would be incorrect. Demers was always seen as offensive with defensive holes and Braun was always seen as a sound defensive d-man with some offensive potential. Don't know where you get they were seen as the same. Braun wasn't producing much offense at the collegiate level when he was drafted so I don't know where you get that he was seen the same way Demers was when Demers was nearly a point-per-game in the Q before his draft year.

As for Tim Burke, he sees a lot of his d-man draft picks as two-way d-men. That's nothing new. Lots of scouts see lots of possibilities with prospects. Most of the time they're wrong. It doesn't mean that it was always there. It may have been there in juniors but it doesn't always translate to the NHL. And offensive prowess is always the toughest thing to translate from juniors to the NHL...especially in the Q. And it's funny that it's always there yet there are many more years where it wasn't than those where it was. Career years happen. In Pickles' case, it took a HoF d-man in his last good year to get his numbers to that level. Maybe if he were to play with Burns full time he could reach those numbers again but is that really his talent that's putting those numbers up at that point or those around him? With Vlasic, I'd take the latter. And I'm sorry but Vlasic does not have the brains to do what Lidstrom did. He simply doesn't have that vision and Vlasic's shot is much softer than Lidstrom's was.

I don't think your Semin bit really means a whole lot. It's always been easier to teach defense than it is to teach offense. A lot of offense is pure instinct. I wouldn't classify Burns as the smartest player in the league but he has a natural instinct for offense. I would say Vlasic is the smarter player but he just doesn't have the instinct in the attacking zone.

 

[OrrNumber4]

I know nobody here understands this no matter how many times it gets told to them, but thornton was never a bad defensive player. It is the 1st thing he learned when he made the jump from ohl to the nhl. Literally thorntons 1st 3 seasons in the nhl was learning the defensive side of the game before finally being moved up to the 2nd line and asked to be more offenisve.

One mistake I made was using the term "defensively". Really, it was Thornton being a more all-around player; more focus in the other two zones.

Thornton was "average" defensively his first couple of seasons in the league. If you want to be an elite center in this league, it is almost always incumbent on you to be very, very good defensively. Especially when it comes to the playoffs, when you need to be able to trust your best players to play at any time, and the ability to play a tight, defensive, grinding game is paramount. Prior to 2010, Thornton was a player you trusted implicitly in the offensive zone and wouldn't deploy in the defensive zone. His commitment to three-zone play in 2010 made him a better player.

 

[WTFetus]

Niemi also said Jamal Mayers had the hardest shot on the team.

 

[Lebanezer]

Wingels is playing himself off the team. I don't really see the point in debating his merits either. In his current form he's easily replaceable. Nieto isn't playing well either. Other options will eventually be explored.

 

[Hatrick Marleau]

Having a hard shot is meaningless if it's not accurate and if you can't get shots through to the net. Matt Tennyson looks like he has a hard shot but it always misses or gets blocked. That was the one thing Matt Irwin was good for...getting good hard shots on net. No one on the Sharks D can do that besides Burns. Braun used to be good at that when he first came up. I'd still say he is the 2nd best at doing that on the D core, though. Too bad Tennyson doesn't have Irwin's offensive skill or he'd be perfect on the bottom pair.

 

[hohosaregood]

I'm ready to bring up joakim ryan and see what he can do but it kind of feels like throwing stuff at a wall and seing what happens.

 

[DonskoiDonscored]

I'm ready to bring up joakim ryan and see what he can do

 

[Sysreq]

I'm ready to bring up joakim ryan and see what he can do but it kind of feels like throwing stuff at a wall and seing what happens.

But isn't that what DW promised? If you aren't working out, we are onto the next guy. Tenny and Mueller aren't working. On to the next guy. If the next guy is worse, maybe we go back to Mueller. But its time for Stollery or Ryan to get a shot. Onto the next guy!

 

[hohosaregood]

But isn't that what DW promised? If you aren't working out, we are onto the next guy. Tenny and Mueller aren't working. On to the next guy. If the next guy is worse, maybe we go back to Mueller. But its time for Stollery or Ryan to get a shot. Onto the next guy!

Stollery would not be a worthwhile callup. There's a reason why he's like 28 and still in the AHL. He's just not that good.

I think Mueller should be in the AHL right now but he's got way more going for him than Tennyson. I'd like to see him get better pairing and line matchups for now.

 

[Sysreq]

Stollery would not be a worthwhile callup. There's a reason why he's like 28 and still in the AHL. He's just not that good.

I think Mueller should be in the AHL right now but he's got way more going for him than Tennyson. I'd like to see him get better pairing and line matchups for now.

I vaguely remember Stollery playing well for a stretch at the end of last season? Maybe not though. He is -4 in 5 NHL games with the Sharks. Well, onto the next guy....

 

[DarrylshutzSydor]

Wingels is playing himself off the team. I don't really see the point in debating his merits either. In his current form he's easily replaceable. Nieto isn't playing well either. Other options will eventually be explored.

Why is he playing himself off of the team?

 

[NathanCouture]

Stollery would not be a worthwhile callup. There's a reason why he's like 28 and still in the AHL. He's just not that good.

But his beard could give Burn's beard a run for it's money...