Around the NHL XXXVIII

[Samsquanch]

The Senators have been in the league for 27 years.

Over that time period, we've had these forwards that have been undisputedly better than Mark Stone:

1. Daniel Alfredsson
2. Jason Spezza
3. Dany Heatley
4. Marian Hossa
5. Alexei Yashin

That's a total of 5. In 27 years.

Maybe you can debate Marty Havlat, but most would disagree, and even then, it's 6. That's 1 "top-end" forward every 2.2 years.

Somehow, I think the odds of us acquiring 3-4 players close to that in the next couple of years, under this regime, is very unlikely.

Re read my post.....I was being facetious, and was specifically talking about 100 players on any given year that could with the MVP award.

As in, I expect the Sens to get another 3 or 4 players during this rebuild that would be considered "top 100 NHLers", or mvp caliber forwards in other words.......

This really isnt a science, and I think your putting more thought into this than it needs.

 

[DaveMatthew]

Re read my post.....I was being facetious, and was specifically talking about 100 players on any given year that could with the MVP award.

As in, I expect the Sens to get another 3 or 4 players during this rebuild that would be considered "top 100 NHLers", or mvp caliber forwards in other words.......

This really isnt a science, and I think your putting more thought into this than it needs.

Mark Stone is not a "top 100" forward. He's a "top 25-30" forward.

And again, in 27 years, Ottawa has only ever had 6 forwards who, at any point in time, have been considered "top 25-30" forwards.

The idea on this board that all of our prospects will develop into these top end players just because we're "rebuilding" is odd. Most of them will become depth players. The rest will bust.

I'm sure at some point people said that we wouldn't miss Chara because, don't worry, we have Andrej Meszaros coming up!

Like I said, the odds that the Senators will acquire 2-3 forwards as good as Mark Stone during this rebuild are extremely small, considered we've only had 5 players like that in 27 years.

When most teams develop stars, they don't let them walk or trade them. That's why there was such a media frenzy around the Stone and Karlsson trades. They hardly ever happen, since teams know better.

 

[Samsquanch]

Mark Stone is not a "top 100" forward. He's a "top 25-30" forward.

Agreed. I dont know what else there needs to be said?

I think that Tkachuk gets there one day. Maybe Batherson too. And hopefully one of Byfield of Laffreniere. Maybe we get super lucky and Brown emerges too.

There's 4 guys if all goes 100% perfectly. Not friggin likely - believe me, I know its a dream. But its not totally impossible either, and even if just 2 of those things happen, we arent in terrible shape at all.

 

[Samsquanch]

but the difference between guys like Stone and Kucherov, Mackinnon, and McDavid is massive.

The rest of your post was great, but this is honestly the only point that I was trying (and failing) to get across this entire time.

Agree wholeheartedly

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

LMAO ok guys you win. Have fun crying yourselves to sleep about losing our former MVP, Mark Stone...

All kidding aside, I really do hope you guys are able to get over it some day. For the sake of everyone else here.

It may take a while for some... look at the habs fans that still cry over the Subban trade. how many years is that?

 

[JD1]

The Senators have been in the league for 27 years.

Over that time period, we've had these forwards that have been undisputedly better than Mark Stone:

1. Daniel Alfredsson
2. Jason Spezza
3. Dany Heatley
4. Marian Hossa
5. Alexei Yashin

That's a total of 5. In 27 years.

Maybe you can debate Marty Havlat, but most would disagree, and even then, it's 6. That's 1 "top-end" forward every 2.2 years.

Somehow, I think the odds of us acquiring 3-4 players close to that in the next couple of years, under this regime, is very unlikely.

Man this Mark Stone thing is taking on a life of it's own.

5 guys.

Hossa will end up in the Hall. Hopefully Alfie does. Spezza no. Heatley no. Yashin no.

Over in the Brannstrom thread there's comparisons to Oates, Jagr and Thornton. 3 HoF calibre guys

Mark Stone is a very good hockey player. He's likely going to have a short career peak amongst the game's elite. His career numbers to date aren't anywhere near where they'd need to be to get HoF level attention.

It's sad that he's gone. But not having his name on an 8*9.5 type deal is a good thing for Ottawa. There are certainly teams in the league where that is not a problem, financially we aren't one of them

 

[DaveMatthew]

Man this Mark Stone thing is taking on a life of it's own.

5 guys.

Hossa will end up in the Hall. Hopefully Alfie does. Spezza no. Heatley no. Yashin no.

Over in the Brannstrom thread there's comparisons to Oates, Jagr and Thornton. 3 HoF calibre guys

Mark Stone is a very good hockey player. He's likely going to have a short career peak amongst the game's elite. His career numbers to date aren't anywhere near where they'd need to be to get HoF level attention.

It's sad that he's gone. But not having his name on an 8*9.5 type deal is a good thing for Ottawa. There are certainly teams in the league where that is not a problem, financially we aren't one of them

The point isn’t that Stone will ever be a HOFer. The point is that it won’t be easy to just develop another Mark Stone, like some people seem to believe. We’ve only developed, or acquired, 5 forwards better than him over 27 years.

And yet, there are posters on this board who seem to think it’s a given that we’ll have a bunch of guys “just as good” come into the lineup in the next couple of years.

There’s a reason why teams usually don’t let players of that stature leave.

Batherson, Norris, Brannstrom, etc are far more likely to become Vermette, Kelly and Mesazros than Stone, Duchene and Karlsson.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

The point isn’t that Stone will ever be a HOFer. The point is that it won’t be easy to just develop another Mark Stone, like some people seem to believe. We’ve only developed, or acquired, 5 forwards better than him over 27 years.

And yet, there are posters on this board who seem to think it’s a given that we’ll have a bunch of guys “just as good” come into the lineup in the next couple of years.

There’s a reason why teams usually don’t let players of that stature leave.

Batherson, Norris, Brannstrom, etc are far more likely to become Vermette, Kelly and Mesazros than Stone, Duchene and Karlsson.

The point is that he was not sticking around for the rebuild. He said it in an interview shortly after the trade.

We will see if the rebuilding works. Good chance it does if we tank hard.

 

[JD1]

The point isn’t that Stone will ever be a HOFer. The point is that it won’t be easy to just develop another Mark Stone, like some people seem to believe. We’ve only developed, or acquired, 5 forwards better than him over 27 years.

And yet, there are posters on this board who seem to think it’s a given that we’ll have a bunch of guys “just as good” come into the lineup in the next couple of years.

There’s a reason why teams usually don’t let players of that stature leave.

Batherson, Norris, Brannstrom, etc are far more likely to become Vermette, Kelly and Mesazros than Stone, Duchene and Karlsson.

Yes I agree with that. He will not be easily replaced. And yes teams usually hang on to players of that ilk

 

[Micklebot]

The point is that he was not sticking around for the rebuild. He said it in an interview shortly after the trade.

We will see if the rebuilding works. Good chance it does if we tank hard.

The time to sign him was two years earlier before he hit RFA and we signed him to that dumb one year deal. We should have been finding a way to get him to put pen to paper the second the playoff run ended (well, that jul anyways).

It would have been so much easier to convince guys to stick around coming off a great playoff run. Would change how things went sideways the next year, but we probably could have signed Stone for less than he signed in vegas back then even taking into account we'd have to overpay a bit to get him to commit early.

Our problem is we want to kick the can down the road and seem to perpetually wait till the last minute to get things done. Now we're in a situation where even when we want to get things done early (Chabot) there's no incentive for the player to do so because we're trying to convince guys when things are at their bleakest. We've backed ourselves into a corner because we were afraid to sign the next Ryan deal. If that's a risk you don't want to take, I get it, signing Stone, Karlsson or Duchene to an 8 year deal comes with risk, but if you aren't prepared to take that risk you got to move on early and ship them off when their value is highest, not wait for the training camp or the deadline.

 

[danielpalfredsson]

Stone should have become the next Alfredsson.

Instead, he became the next Karlsson.

 

[Qward]

Heatley, Spezza, Alfredsson, Karlsson, Stone.

Ottawa Senators, we breed super stars and release them into the wild.

 

[DaveMatthew]

The point is that he was not sticking around for the rebuild. He said it in an interview shortly after the trade.

We will see if the rebuilding works. Good chance it does if we tank hard.

Well he said a few things that could be taken in many different ways. On TSN right after the trade, he said, "I understand why they wouldn't want to give out a big contract like that".

If we had offered the same exact contract as Vegas would we have stayed? We'll never know. I tend to side with him looking for greener pastures, like you, (that's what I would have done if I was him), but we do know that it wasn't an apples to apples offer. We were looking at "creative 5 year contracts" and Vegas gave him everything, no questions asked.

With that said, I don't believe that Stone, Karlsson and Duchene left because of the "rebuild". I believe it's because they see our management and ownership as incompetent and not at all committed to winning. I bet if we had kicked off the summer of 2018 by firing Dorion/Boucher and bringing in Lamiorello/Trotz to lead the rebuild, and offered good contracts, 2 of the 3 would still be here.

 

[DaveMatthew]

Our problem is we want to kick the can down the road and seem to perpetually wait till the last minute to get things done. Now we're in a situation where even when we want to get things done early (Chabot) there's no incentive for the player to do so because we're trying to convince guys when things are at their bleakest. We've backed ourselves into a corner because we were afraid to sign the next Ryan deal. If that's a risk you don't want to take, I get it, signing Stone, Karlsson or Duchene to an 8 year deal comes with risk, but if you aren't prepared to take that risk you got to move on early and ship them off when their value is highest, not wait for the training camp or the deadline.

This. Hey, I understand if the team didn't want to give Karlsson an 8-year 88 million dollar contract with a full NMC. There's risk there! He might get hurt again, he might never regain his full skating, hell, they might not like his personality. All of those are fine reasons to move on.

But, they should have made that decision in February 2018. Waiting to trade him on the first day of training camp, after other teams had already filled out their rosters/allocated their cap space during the draft and free-agency was pure idiocy.

 

[Micklebot]

Well he said a few things that could be taken in many different ways. On TSN right after the trade, he said, "I understand why they wouldn't want to give out a big contract like that".

If we had offered the same exact contract as Vegas would we have stayed? We'll never know. I tend to side with him looking for greener pastures, like you, (that's what I would have done if I was him), but we do know that it wasn't an apples to apples offer. We were looking at "creative 5 year contracts" and Vegas gave him everything, no questions asked.

With that said, I don't believe that Stone, Karlsson and Duchene left because of the "rebuild". I believe it's because they see our management and ownership as incompetent and not at all committed to winning. I bet if we had kicked off the summer of 2018 by firing Dorion/Boucher and bringing in Lamiorello/Trotz to lead the rebuild, and offered good contracts, 2 of the 3 would still be here.

It's a bit of a house of cards scenario. How Karlsson was handled and left likely influenced both Duchene and Stone's decisions. Had one or the other signed it's quite possible the other would have followed suit too, but with both Stone and Duchene seeing the potential of being part of the rebuild without the others they thought it in their better interest to move on.

Frankly, once we made the decision to move on from Karlsson, there's an argument to be made that we were better off moving on from both Stone and Duchene too.

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

Well he said a few things that could be taken in many different ways. On TSN right after the trade, he said, "I understand why they wouldn't want to give out a big contract like that".

If we had offered the same exact contract as Vegas would we have stayed? We'll never know. I tend to side with him looking for greener pastures, like you, (that's what I would have done if I was him), but we do know that it wasn't an apples to apples offer. We were looking at "creative 5 year contracts" and Vegas gave him everything, no questions asked.

With that said, I don't believe that Stone, Karlsson and Duchene left because of the "rebuild". I believe it's because they see our management and ownership as incompetent and not at all committed to winning. I bet if we had kicked off the summer of 2018 by firing Dorion/Boucher and bringing in Lamiorello/Trotz to lead the rebuild, and offered good contracts, 2 of the 3 would still be here.

I think it snowballed after EM decided to move EK. The rest of the guys knew there was no chance for glory for another 4-5 years. For them, it was their prime chance to being a big part of a SCF campaign.

I don’t think the NHL is ether same anymore.

I would imagine some guys probably get told by ex-players like Alfredsson to “go and chase the cup... don’t pass up a chance”.

 

[branch]

Stone should have become the next Alfredsson.

Instead, he became the next Karlsson.

Unreal that we will have to watch them play for the next 8 years, and be remembered as a Knight/Shark. That's just f***ing cruel.

 

[Ice-Tray]

Fair on Kucherov.

But my point still stands. O'Reilly isn't thought of your prototypical "MVP" player, but he's just as valuable because of everything he brings to a team. He proved that this year when he won the Conn Smythe.

Mark Stone can be considered that same quality of player, and I consider that MVP calibre. Other players in that tier: Mark Scheifele, Jonathan Toews (in his prime), Patrice Bergeron.

No. RR actually put up the playoff MVP performance. Stone has yet to do that.

No one gets kudos for the vague notion of ‘also being able to do it but just hasn’t for reasons’.

Let the guy put up an MVP performance before saying he’s capable.

This thread is hilarious... So now Stone is on the same level as Toews and Bergeron in their primes...

Nothing really left to discuss.

 

[branch]

No. RR actually put up the playoff MVP performance. Stone has yet to do that.

No one gets kudos for the vague notion of ‘also being able to do it but just hasn’t for reasons’.

Let the guy put up an MVP performance before saying he’s capable.

This thread is hilarious... So now Stone is on the same level as Toews and Bergeron in their primes...

Nothing really left to discuss.

Mark Stone put up 12 pts in 7 games in this years playoffs.

Nothing really left to discuss.

 

[Ice-Tray]

The time to sign him was two years earlier before he hit RFA and we signed him to that dumb one year deal. We should have been finding a way to get him to put pen to paper the second the playoff run ended (well, that jul anyways).

It would have been so much easier to convince guys to stick around coming off a great playoff run. Would change how things went sideways the next year, but we probably could have signed Stone for less than he signed in vegas back then even taking into account we'd have to overpay a bit to get him to commit early.

Our problem is we want to kick the can down the road and seem to perpetually wait till the last minute to get things done. Now we're in a situation where even when we want to get things done early (Chabot) there's no incentive for the player to do so because we're trying to convince guys when things are at their bleakest. We've backed ourselves into a corner because we were afraid to sign the next Ryan deal. If that's a risk you don't want to take, I get it, signing Stone, Karlsson or Duchene to an 8 year deal comes with risk, but if you aren't prepared to take that risk you got to move on early and ship them off when their value is highest, not wait for the training camp or the deadline.

Have you stopped to consider that he didn’t want to sign long term at that time? That he and his camp were guaranteed a one year deal through arbitration no matter what the team wanted, and he was able to take a wait and see approach, looking at thing positively, or simply hit UFA status and have control over everything.

You guys are classic with this idea that the team simply didn’t sign the guy long term, as though he was going to sign whatever was put in front of him and PD chose the one year option over the eight.

 

[Ice-Tray]

Mark Stone put up 12 pts in 7 games in this years playoffs.

Nothing really left to discuss.

And one of the most epic collapses in playoff history.

I mean, there is nothing to discuss if you mean that it wasn’t in any way shape or form a playoff MVP performance? A great stretch for sure though.

‘Pace’ and ‘could be’ don’t really cut it when we’re taking about the MfrigginVP

 

[Ice-Tray]

Heatley, Spezza, Alfredsson, Karlsson, Stone.

Ottawa Senators, we breed super stars and release them into the wild.

Well, we enjoyed the best years of all of those players, except for maybe Stone if he’s able to do better than last year.

The rest were traded after their primes were over.

 

[Ice-Tray]

The time to sign him was two years earlier before he hit RFA and we signed him to that dumb one year deal. We should have been finding a way to get him to put pen to paper the second the playoff run ended (well, that jul anyways).

It would have been so much easier to convince guys to stick around coming off a great playoff run. Would change how things went sideways the next year, but we probably could have signed Stone for less than he signed in vegas back then even taking into account we'd have to overpay a bit to get him to commit early.

Our problem is we want to kick the can down the road and seem to perpetually wait till the last minute to get things done. Now we're in a situation where even when we want to get things done early (Chabot) there's no incentive for the player to do so because we're trying to convince guys when things are at their bleakest. We've backed ourselves into a corner because we were afraid to sign the next Ryan deal. If that's a risk you don't want to take, I get it, signing Stone, Karlsson or Duchene to an 8 year deal comes with risk, but if you aren't prepared to take that risk you got to move on early and ship them off when their value is highest, not wait for the training camp or the deadline.

Lol, the deadline is when their value is at its highest, until it’s inconvenient for the argument. It’s not before the season starts either turns out....

It must be at the draft or mid season..... or is it November....

lol, the truth is the TDL is generally where you get some of the best returns on expiring contracts.

 

[Ice-Tray]

Well he said a few things that could be taken in many different ways. On TSN right after the trade, he said, "I understand why they wouldn't want to give out a big contract like that".

If we had offered the same exact contract as Vegas would we have stayed? We'll never know. I tend to side with him looking for greener pastures, like you, (that's what I would have done if I was him), but we do know that it wasn't an apples to apples offer. We were looking at "creative 5 year contracts" and Vegas gave him everything, no questions asked.

With that said, I don't believe that Stone, Karlsson and Duchene left because of the "rebuild". I believe it's because they see our management and ownership as incompetent and not at all committed to winning. I bet if we had kicked off the summer of 2018 by firing Dorion/Boucher and bringing in Lamiorello/Trotz to lead the rebuild, and offered good contracts, 2 of the 3 would still be here.

See the problem I have with this line of thinking is that you’re willing to disregard everything everyone involved has to say about things in favour of a personal opinion that is based on absolutely zero inside information. It’s like disregarding the facts because you’d rather believe in a storyline that supports your dislike for the manager and owner, which in turn you use as fact to to support further disdain. That same line of thinking is what some people apply to vaccinations.

 

[Ice-Tray]

It's a bit of a house of cards scenario. How Karlsson was handled and left likely influenced both Duchene and Stone's decisions. Had one or the other signed it's quite possible the other would have followed suit too, but with both Stone and Duchene seeing the potential of being part of the rebuild without the others they thought it in their better interest to move on.

Frankly, once we made the decision to move on from Karlsson, there's an argument to be made that we were better off moving on from both Stone and Duchene too.

Except both had monster seasons that likely increased their value by the time the TDL arrived. No, they were traded at the precise best time.

Going the JT route would have been the disaster, as would trading them in the summer or at the draft before they both had dominated seasons.