Dennis "Chili Dog" Cholowski

[Dotter]

I understand that your love affair with Ken Holland runs very, very deep and that there is nothing that Ken Holland could possibly have done differently to alter the current state of this team. The list of top pair and top four defensemen taken outside of the first round, however, extends well beyond Keith, Subban, Weber and Kleinberg.

Every human-being known to mankind can look back at the past and think they could have done something differently. Nothing is more clear than hindsight vision. And sports fan as a whole all have the clearest 20/20 hindsight vision.. but it's not really a skill to have, but rather it's really just whining at any given situation they can look back on that didn't work out perfectly to a "T".

That said, it's about limiting mistakes which I think our GM has done a great job at under the circumstances while keeping the playoff streak alive.

I bet you the GMs that picked Keith, Subban, Weber and Kleinberg are thinking "wow, we really lucked out on this guy!"

 

[jkutswings]

Anything can happen in a single draft, and yes, hindsight is 20/20.

But over a long stretch of time, if a given franchise takes too few defensemen in the draft, and none of the defensemen they do select become more than a bottom pair or waiver fodder player, then call a spade a spade, and say that they were insufficient in addressing defense in the draft.

Next summer Detroit will have its best draft stock in over two decades. I think we can all agree that we want them to make the most of it. But there's no harm in having concerns about aspects of their talent evaluation, based on past results.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

Every human-being known to mankind can look back at the past and think they could have done something differently. Nothing is more clear than hindsight vision. And sports fan as a whole all have the clearest 20/20 hindsight vision.. but it's not really a skill to have, but rather it's really just whining at any given situation they can look back on that didn't work out perfectly to a "T".

That said, it's about limiting mistakes which I think our GM has done a great job at under the circumstances while keeping the playoff streak alive.

I bet you the GMs that picked Keith, Subban, Weber and Kleinberg are thinking "wow, we really lucked out on this guy!"

At the end of the day, results matter. I feel sorry for you if you haven't yet learned this important life lesson. No matter how you want to spin it, the Wings organization did not get the results they needed in drafting defensemen over the last 15 years. Was it a challenging task? Sure, but that does not change the fact that many good defensemen were drafted outside of the first round.

The guys that drafted Keith, Subban, Weber and Kleinberg more likely thought, "wow, we really got lucky on that one. We better not hold ourselves out to the public as being able to replicate that sort of lucky drafting."

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

At the end of the day, results matter. I feel sorry for you if you haven't yet learned this important life lesson. No matter how you want to spin it, the Wings organization did not get the results they needed in drafting defensemen over the last 15 years. Was it a challenging task? Sure, but that does not change the fact that many good defensemen were drafted outside of the first round.

I think sometimes there's this weird idea that doing well in terms of what you have to work with is a substitute for doing well in absolute terms. Like we should be happy because the Wings have done well for their draft position, even though they objectively have not drafted that much high end talent.

But in the end, it doesn't matter that you did really well relative to your circumstances. All that matters is having the talent or not having the talent, which is why high picks are important.

 

[Pavels Dog]

I understand that your love affair with Ken Holland runs very, very deep and that there is nothing that Ken Holland could possibly have done differently to alter the current state of this team. The list of top pair and top four defensemen taken outside of the first round, however, extends well beyond Keith, Subban, Weber and Kleinberg.

I love that anytime someone tries to bring just a little bit of sanity into a discussion about the state of the team, it's met with zero counterpoints other than stuff like "you have a love affair with Holland". Try reading what I wrote.

You can bash Holland all you want for trading away too many picks. But you can't bash our scouting for not drafting players with picks they never had. But by all means, do put together the list of current top-pairing d-men drafted outside of the 1st round that extends "well beyond" Keith/Subban/Weber and explain with which draft pick we should have drafted that player. It's the kind of discussion I'm looking for, one grounded in reality. Top 4 d-men you can also put together a list of, but it's less interesting since another #3-4 would make basically zero difference for this team. Yeah, we could have drafted Petry, maybe Niskanen. Who really cares? We wouldn't be much better off.

If you do well relative to your circumstances and you still find yourself towards the bottom of the standings, you need to either do better at what you are doing or you need to change you circumstances.

You really can't see any difference between 00-10 and 11-16 in terms of the amount of draft picks we've had, the draft position we've had, and the amount of quality talent we're finding? We are paying for being a contender so long. That was our circumstance. Would you go back and change it?

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

I think sometimes there's this weird idea that doing well in terms of what you have to work with is a substitute for doing well in absolute terms. Like we should be happy because the Wings have done well for their draft position, even though they objectively have not drafted that much high end talent.

But in the end, it doesn't matter that you did really well relative to your circumstances. All that matters is having the talent or not having the talent, which is why high picks are important.

If you do well relative to your circumstances and you still find yourself towards the bottom of the standings, you need to either do better at what you are doing or you need to change you circumstances.

 

[FlashyG]

Anything can happen in a single draft, and yes, hindsight is 20/20.

But over a long stretch of time, if a given franchise takes too few defensemen in the draft, and none of the defensemen they do select become more than a bottom pair or waiver fodder player, then call a spade a spade, and say that they were insufficient in addressing defense in the draft.

Next summer Detroit will have its best draft stock in over two decades. I think we can all agree that we want them to make the most of it. But there's no harm in having concerns about aspects of their talent evaluation, based on past results.

TSN did a statistical analysis of your odds of landing an NHL player based on draft position.

In the 2nd round getting a player that even plays in 100 NHL games happens only around 33% of the time.

In the 3rd round your odds of getting a player who plays 100 games is around 25%

that percentage drops to around 17% in the 4th round, and to less than 15% in round 5.

If you're not selected in the first 100 picks of a draft the averages say you probably won't play more than 50 NHL games in your career.

Not counting the past couple of drafts since we don't know what we have in those players, the Wings have drafted 21 defenceman over a 9 year span.

2 in the first round, both played over 250 NHL games which puts Smith just slightly above average for a defenceman taken in his slot and Kindl just below the average for players taken in his. Nothing to celebrate but also nothing to complain about. We're batting .1000 at getting NHL players in those slots, but not at getting the quality we really need.

In the 2nd round the Wings have also only picked 2 defenceman. Both in slots that will typically produce players that will play around 50 NHL games in their careers. Ouellet will hit that mark tonight and Sproul will hit it later this season or early next year. Again, nothing spectacular but slightly above the league average for draft success by slot.

So to circle back to your post. While its true the Wings haven't adequately addressed their need by getting a top pairing defenceman over that 9 year span, it isn't because of a failure in their scouting or drafting.

It's kind of like having a MLB batting champion on your team who bats over .500 but complaining that he doesn't hit enough home runs.

 

[jkutswings]

I love that anytime someone tries to bring just a little bit of sanity into a discussion about the state of the team, it's met with zero counterpoints other than stuff like "you have a love affair with Holland". Try reading what I wrote.

You can bash Holland all you want for trading away too many picks. But you can't bash our scouting for not drafting players with picks they never had. But by all means, do put together the list of current top-pairing d-men drafted outside of the 1st round that extends "well beyond" Keith/Subban/Weber and explain with which draft pick we should have drafted that player. It's the kind of discussion I'm looking for, one grounded in reality. Top 4 d-men you can also put together a list of, but it's less interesting since another #3-4 would make basically zero difference for this team. Yeah, we could have drafted Petry, maybe Niskanen. Who really cares? We wouldn't be much better off.

Considering that they don't currently have a single top pairing defenseman on the roster, I'd say that another one or two top-4 guys would help. And if those top-4 players were decent at starting the rush, it would make a big difference.

Now, had they acquired these players via draft, there's no guarantee that either DeKeyser or Green are even here, but if you essentially have 5-6 middle pairing guys, instead of 3-4 and a handful of fringe guys, they would collectively shelter each other a little more, and you could even give the tougher minutes to the hot hand if you wanted.

 

[jkutswings]

TSN did a statistical analysis of your odds of landing an NHL player based on draft position.

In the 2nd round getting a player that even plays in 100 NHL games happens only around 33% of the time.

In the 3rd round your odds of getting a player who plays 100 games is around 25%

that percentage drops to around 17% in the 4th round, and to less than 15% in round 5.

If you're not selected in the first 100 picks of a draft the averages say you probably won't play more than 50 NHL games in your career.

Not counting the past couple of drafts since we don't know what we have in those players, the Wings have drafted 21 defenceman over a 9 year span.

2 in the first round, both played over 250 NHL games which puts Smith just slightly above average for a defenceman taken in his slot and Kindl just below the average for players taken in his. Nothing to celebrate but also nothing to complain about. We're batting .1000 at getting NHL players in those slots, but not at getting the quality we really need.

In the 2nd round the Wings have also only picked 2 defenceman. Both in slots that will typically produce players that will play around 50 NHL games in their careers. Ouellet will hit that mark tonight and Sproul will hit it later this season or early next year. Again, nothing spectacular but slightly above the league average for draft success by slot.

So to circle back to your post. While its true the Wings haven't adequately addressed their need by getting a top pairing defenceman over that 9 year span, it isn't because of a failure in their scouting or drafting.

It's kind of like having a MLB batting champion on your team who bats over .500 but complaining that he doesn't hit enough home runs.

Again, who said anything about limiting things to the top pair?

If it's so impossible to find anybody decent outside of high first round picks, how are all these other teams doing it? By the very math you referenced, had they properly addressed the position, they would have multiple top-4 players over the course of a decade.

The point is that yes, the odds are low in finding a great player in one draft. But Detroit has done a below average job (at best) at finding decent defensemen in ANY round of the draft for a long time now.

Or do you disagree that you can count on one hand, the teams that have a worse overall collection of defensemen?

 

[MTU hockey]

Luck certainly plays a huge role in getting a top pairing defender outside of the first round. But Detroit hasn't even been able to draft a top 4 defenseman in any round since Kronner (maybe you can include big E), and that's pathetic. Nashville seems to be the opposite of Detroit. Weber, Josi, Ekholm, Ellis, and Suter all taken outside the top 5 picks. Carolina's also been aquiring a plethora of defensive talent from outside the lottery picks. The Wings defense would be in a much better situation if we had just one player of the same caliber as Ekholm or Vatenan.

XXX-Green
DK-XXX

Replace XXX with a good top 4 d man like Ekholm or Vatanen and our defense goes from bottom 5 in the league to about league average. Finding a top pairing d is hard, but at the moment I'd say we need a top pairing d and a #2. And if Green leaves in FA or trade then we need a #3.

Hopefully Cholo can be an impact top 4 defenseman for the Wings. But I worry because like others mentioned our track record for developing d men is worrisome. I say we should know what we have it Cholo in the next 4 years because after looking at the development curve of other top 4 defenseman, very few spend more than a season and a half in the AHL. Granted everyone's development curve is different but most top 4 d men seem to rip up the AHL their first year pro and end up making the NHL at some point in their 2nd pro season. So hopefully Cholo dominates the NCAA over the next year or two and goes pro, if he reaches his potential our rebuild could be a quick one.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

I love that anytime someone tries to bring just a little bit of sanity into a discussion about the state of the team, it's met with zero counterpoints other than stuff like "you have a love affair with Holland". Try reading what I wrote.

You can bash Holland all you want for trading away too many picks. But you can't bash our scouting for not drafting players with picks they never had. But by all means, do put together the list of current top-pairing d-men drafted outside of the 1st round that extends "well beyond" Keith/Subban/Weber and explain with which draft pick we should have drafted that player. It's the kind of discussion I'm looking for, one grounded in reality. Top 4 d-men you can also put together a list of, but it's less interesting since another #3-4 would make basically zero difference for this team. Yeah, we could have drafted Petry, maybe Niskanen. Who really cares? We wouldn't be much better off.


You really can't see any difference between 00-10 and 11-16 in terms of the amount of draft picks we've had, the draft position we've had, and the amount of quality talent we're finding? We are paying for being a contender so long. That was our circumstance. Would you go back and change it?

Where would you like to start? Frk over Severson and Ghost? Ritola over Yandle and Hjalmarsson? Ferraro over Barrie? Nestrasil over Savard? That is 60 seconds of research and ignores that we took Kindl over Niskanen, Letang and Vlasic.

I understand that drafting defensemen is very difficult. It is dishonest, however, to suggest that we did not have the opportunity to acquire top 4 defensemen outside of the first round that would help our team today. Again, results matter and we came up short. If we were going to succeed at the famed "rebuild on the fly" we really needed to hit on some defensemen (outside of the first round it would happen). Unfortunately we came up short in that department and are now squarely facing a rebuild (whether Holland wants to admit it or not).

Now if it was impossible for us to do better than we did in drafting defensemen, re-building on the fly was never really an option, was it?

 

[Pavels Dog]

If it's so impossible to find anybody decent outside of high first round picks, how are all these other teams doing it?

"all these other teams" = 29 teams vs. 1. If you limit it to picks outside of the top 15 and compare the Wings 1-on-1 with every team I would guess we come out looking pretty solid against most of them. A handful of teams, such as Nashville/Anaheim, maybe Carolina, are the big exceptions. And by and large, those teams have struggled to get anywhere near the same amount of forward talent that we have.

Luck certainly plays a huge role in getting a top pairing defender outside of the first round. But Detroit hasn't even been able to draft a top 4 defenseman in any round since Kronner (maybe you can include big E), and that's pathetic. Nashville seems to be the opposite of Detroit. Weber, Josi, Ekholm, Ellis, and Suter all taken outside the top 5 picks. Carolina's also been aquiring a plethora of defensive talent from outside the lottery picks. The Wings defense would be in a much better situation if we had just one player of the same caliber as Ekholm or Vatenan.

Weber/Josi : picked before we had our first pick in those drafts
Ellis/Suter : top 15 picks (11th, 7th).
Ekholm/Vatanen : 4th rounders in 09. Wings didn't have a 4th rounder that year. Could certainly have used the 3rd (Fournier) on one of them instead. You can count it as a draft miss. But it's like with Dats/Z, if those teams knew how good those guys would become they would have drafted them a lot sooner.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

TSN did a statistical analysis of your odds of landing an NHL player based on draft position.

In the 2nd round getting a player that even plays in 100 NHL games happens only around 33% of the time.

In the 3rd round your odds of getting a player who plays 100 games is around 25%

that percentage drops to around 17% in the 4th round, and to less than 15% in round 5.

If you're not selected in the first 100 picks of a draft the averages say you probably won't play more than 50 NHL games in your career.

Not counting the past couple of drafts since we don't know what we have in those players, the Wings have drafted 21 defenceman over a 9 year span.

2 in the first round, both played over 250 NHL games which puts Smith just slightly above average for a defenceman taken in his slot and Kindl just below the average for players taken in his. Nothing to celebrate but also nothing to complain about. We're batting .1000 at getting NHL players in those slots, but not at getting the quality we really need.

In the 2nd round the Wings have also only picked 2 defenceman. Both in slots that will typically produce players that will play around 50 NHL games in their careers. Ouellet will hit that mark tonight and Sproul will hit it later this season or early next year. Again, nothing spectacular but slightly above the league average for draft success by slot.

So to circle back to your post. While its true the Wings haven't adequately addressed their need by getting a top pairing defenceman over that 9 year span, it isn't because of a failure in their scouting or drafting.

It's kind of like having a MLB batting champion on your team who bats over .500 but complaining that he doesn't hit enough home runs.

This is how I feel - we've been very successful at getting "NHL players" relative to our draft position, but none of those players have gone on to be quality NHL players.

Who's the last guy we drafted who overachieved relative to his draft position?

Mrazek? Except goalies are a crap shoot, no matter what round you draft them in.
Marchenko? Playing 100 games for a 7th rounder is over-achieving, but he's still a 3rd pairing defensive defenseman, so isn't the kind of over-achiever we need.
Nyquist is probably the last player we've drafted who's genuinely over-achieved by being a 4th rounder who turned into a 50pt winger. And that was in 2008, 8 years ago.
Helm over-achieved for a 5th rounder, but he's in the same bracket as Marchenko.

The next guy after that that genuinely over-achieved is Franzen, and he was drafted so long ago, that he's frikkin retired!

 

[jkutswings]

"all these other teams" = 29 teams vs. 1. If you limit it to picks outside of the top 15 and compare the Wings 1-on-1 with every team I would guess we come out looking pretty solid against most of them. A handful of teams, such as Nashville/Anaheim, maybe Carolina, are the big exceptions. And by and large, those teams have struggled to get anywhere near the same amount of forward talent that we have.


Weber/Josi : picked before we had our first pick in those drafts
Ellis/Suter : top 15 picks (11th, 7th).
Ekholm/Vatanen : 4th rounders in 09. Wings didn't have a 4th rounder that year. Could certainly have used the 3rd (Fournier) on one of them instead. You can count it as a draft miss. But it's like with Dats/Z, if those teams knew how good those guys would become they would have drafted them a lot sooner.

29 other teams have used a combination of drafting, free agency, and trades to acquire defensemen. And a vast majority of them have done it better than Detroit, including those that had worse draft stock over the last several years.

Which is why, sooner or later, you simply HAVE to rebuild. Trying to find diamonds in the rough to that extreme is eventually an unsustainable practice, and you lose the numbers game.

 

[SimplySolace]

Is this a Cholowski thread?

 

[Pavels Dog]

Where would you like to start? Frk over Severson and Ghost? Ritola over Yandle and Hjalmarsson? Ferraro over Barrie? Nestrasil over Savard? That is 60 seconds of research and ignores that we took Kindl over Niskanen, Letang and Vlasic.

Now if it was impossible for us to do better than we did in drafting defensemen, re-building on the fly was never really an option, was it?

Ghost was drafted a full round after Frk. That's a reach and a half. Severson is more realistic, but then again I don't think he's very good. But sure.

Ritola over Hammer/Yandle, I'll give you that one. Put it down to overconfidence in the Kindl pick, they likely prioritized repleneshing forward depth after the 1st round. Gave us Helm and Abby at least.

Barrie over Ferraro is again basically making a full round's worth of a reach. I don't see that as a fair expectation of our scouts, prioritizing a much worse prospect on the off chance that they'll strike gold. If they make that kind of reach and it fails (99% more likely than success) they lose their jobs, instantly.

Savard? Yeah.. I guess. If only we had made that pick. We'd be in such a great position. With Savard. The missing piece.

Letang? Please let me know how you'd feel if Holland had selected Niemelainen at #20 this year. Niskanen would be a small reach and is realistic, Vlasic is already a pretty big reach.

Personally I don't count it as a miss if we didn't draft 5th rounders in the 3rd round or 3rd rounders in the 1st round. Ritola over Hammer/Yandle is one of the most glaring misses we've done. And I don't think either of those players would have put this team in a much better situation currently.

As for re-building on the fly, it was always going to require some luck. But personally as I'm sure you know, I think this team has the ability to be better right now. I think our scouts have done a reasonable job with what they've had to work with. And I think they're showing that they can find better talent if they're just given slightly better means to do so. In the 15-20 range they can find good players. Give them an extra 2nd round pick here and there and they'll land us a Bertuzzi or a Hronek. A top 10 pick wouldn't hurt, but I don't feel our scouts are bad enough that an extended tank is required. We're not Edmonton.

29 other teams have used a combination of drafting, free agency, and trades to acquire defensemen. And a vast majority of them have done it better than Detroit, including those that had worse draft stock over the last several years.

Which is why, sooner or later, you simply HAVE to rebuild. Trying to find diamonds in the rough to that extreme is eventually an unsustainable practice, and you lose the numbers game.

Trying to find elite d-men in the 4th and 5th and 6th rounds is unsustainable. Trying to find them in the 15-20 range is possible. Karlsson was picked there for example. No team has successfully built their d core through trades/FA. Having a worse draft position in the last few years doesn't matter, those drafts are still up in the air. Their draft position from 2000-2010 is what matters, and no team comes close to the Wings draft position in that time.

 

[Frk It]

Ghost was drafted a full round after Frk. That's a reach and a half. Severson is more realistic, but then again I don't think he's very good. But sure.

Ritola over Hammer/Yandle, I'll give you that one. Put it down to overconfidence in the Kindl pick, they likely prioritized repleneshing forward depth after the 1st round. Gave us Helm and Abby at least.

Barrie over Ferraro is again basically making a full round's worth of a reach. I don't see that as a fair expectation of our scouts, prioritizing a much worse prospect on the off chance that they'll strike gold. If they make that kind of reach and it fails (99% more likely than success) they lose their jobs, instantly.

Savard? Yeah.. I guess. If only we had made that pick. We'd be in such a great position. With Savard. The missing piece.

Personally I don't count it as a miss if we didn't draft 5th rounders in the 3rd round or 3rd rounders in the 1st round. Ritola over Hammer/Yandle is one of the most glaring misses we've done. And I don't think either of those players would have put this team in a much better situation currently.

Are you acting like we don't ever make reaches? The thing about reaches is, no one cares if they turn out in the end.
Tyler Bertuzzi was a humongous reach. Cholowski was a reach just last year.

Again, no one cares if the pick works out in the long run. The Larkin pick wasn't even very well received. No one is mad at that pick now. No one. All that we care about is that you get it right.

Also our worst miss probably hasn't even been mentioned. Josi was picked 8 picks after McCollum. Now are you going to try and tell me we wouldn't be a much better team with Josi, too?

Letang? Please let me know how you'd feel if Holland had selected Niemelainen at #20 this year. Niskanen would be a small reach and is realistic, Vlasic is already a pretty big reach.

I would not have been mad at Kale Clague or Sam Girard at #20 at all. Legitimately.

 

[Rzombo4 prez]

Ghost was drafted a full round after Frk. That's a reach and a half. Severson is more realistic, but then again I don't think he's very good. But sure.

Ritola over Hammer/Yandle, I'll give you that one. Put it down to overconfidence in the Kindl pick, they likely prioritized repleneshing forward depth after the 1st round. Gave us Helm and Abby at least.

Barrie over Ferraro is again basically making a full round's worth of a reach. I don't see that as a fair expectation of our scouts, prioritizing a much worse prospect on the off chance that they'll strike gold. If they make that kind of reach and it fails (99% more likely than success) they lose their jobs, instantly.

Savard? Yeah.. I guess. If only we had made that pick. We'd be in such a great position. With Savard. The missing piece.

Letang? Please let me know how you'd feel if Holland had selected Niemelainen at #20 this year. Niskanen would be a small reach and is realistic, Vlasic is already a pretty big reach.

Personally I don't count it as a miss if we didn't draft 5th rounders in the 3rd round or 3rd rounders in the 1st round. Ritola over Hammer/Yandle is one of the most glaring misses we've done. And I don't think either of those players would have put this team in a much better situation currently.

As for re-building on the fly, it was always going to require some luck. But personally as I'm sure you know, I think this team has the ability to be better right now. I think our scouts have done a reasonable job with what they've had to work with. And I think they're showing that they can find better talent if they're just given slightly better means to do so. In the 15-20 range they can find good players. Give them an extra 2nd round pick here and there and they'll land us a Bertuzzi or a Hronek. A top 10 pick wouldn't hurt, but I don't feel our scouts are bad enough that an extended tank is required. We're not Edmonton.


Trying to find elite d-men in the 4th and 5th and 6th rounds is unsustainable. Trying to find them in the 15-20 range is possible. Karlsson was picked there for example. No team has successfully built their d core through trades/FA. Having a worse draft position in the last few years doesn't matter, those drafts are still up in the air. Their draft position from 2000-2010 is what matters, and no team comes close to the Wings draft position in that time.

Awfully random parameters there, wouldn't you say? You must not follow NHL drafts very closely if you think that +/- 1 round in a reach, especially after the first 50 or so picks when everything starts to look very random.

Again, if we could not have drafted any better than we did and we still found the bottom of the standings, rebuilding on the fly was never really an option. I am sorry if you drank that kool aid.

 

[SoupNazi]

Is this a Cholowski thread?

Believe it or not, yes.

Let's get back on the topic of Cholowski.

 

[Frk It]

Believe it or not, yes.

Let's get back on the topic of Cholowski.

If you comparee him to other U19 players in College Hockey, he's doing pretty good.

Damn Adam Fox is killing it so far. I think Vatican was big on him last year iirc?

http://www.eliteprospects.com/league.php?season=2016&leagueid=NCAA&nation=&sort=u19

 

[jkutswings]

Even if Cholo eventually has an impact akin to a Scott Niedermeyer, I don't see any chance of that at all for at least another 4-5 years.

Again, I'm glad the kid is playing well thus far, but there's a whole lot of addressing the existing defense before this kid will ever even make the roster, let alone have a chance to dominate on it. #BuildABridgeToCholo

 

[Wood Stick]

Even if Cholo eventually has an impact akin to a Scott Niedermeyer, I don't see any chance of that at all for at least another 4-5 years.

Again, I'm glad the kid is playing well thus far, but there's a whole lot of addressing the existing defense before this kid will ever even make the roster, let alone have a chance to dominate on it. #BuildABridgeToCholo

Let's say 3 years in college, 1 year AHL. He'll be here at 22 which isn't awful.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

He doesn't have a flashy style. He's a stay at home D at this level. The 2012 draft was weak, but defensively produced some pretty names like Morgan Reilly, Hampus Lindholm, Olli Maatta, and Jacob Trouba.

Lindholm is the only guy listed there that I would take over Ryan Murray if he can stay healthy. It isn't all Werenski making Columbus click. Murray and Jones have been huge down there. They have an insane amount of talent on their back-end in Cbus.

But this is another reason people should not get bent out of shape on Cholo. He could pass the guys in front.

 

[Frk It]

Lindholm is the only guy listed there that I would take over Ryan Murray if he can stay healthy. It isn't all Werenski making Columbus click. Murray and Jones have been huge down there. They have an insane amount of talent on their back-end in Cbus.

But this is another reason people should not get bent out of shape on Cholo. He could pass the guys in front.

Murray is 5th in toi/g on their team behind Jones, Johnson, Savard, and Werenski. By a good gap. He has less points on the season than Xavier Ouellet.

You're seriously overestimating his importance to that team.

I'd take Reilly and Lindholm over him any day.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

Murray is 5th in toi/g on their team behind Jones, Johnson, Savard, and Werenski. By a good gap. He has less points on the season than Xavier Ouellet.

You're seriously overestimating his importance to that team.

I'd take Reilly and Lindholm over him any day.

Not a big fan of Morgan Reilly. I don't think he is terrible, but I think he is pretty close to what he is. Which for me is really a second pairing offensive D-man if used correctly on a good team.

We will see. I think the talent is still there for Murray if he can get himself healthy for clip. Kronwall had that problem early in his development.

Cholo could be a Lindholm type by the way, with how he skates and how rangy his frame might wind up being.

Remember that Lindholm pick was kind of unpopular at the time.