GDT: Game 55 Avs host Kings @7pm MT. Hump Day Meme-o-Rama

avs1dacup

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BTW I absolutely loved the fact that Doughty got completely torched by the fourth line after trying to mug Bellemare in the corner. That was delicious. I've always disliked that guy.

In his 2nd or 3rd year in the league, I remember a play that he drew a high sticking call by throwing his head back. The Avs player was visibly confused. Upon replay from a different angle, the stick was about a foot away from his face and didn't come anywhere close to hitting him. Ever since, he can pound sand like the embellishing fake tough guy he is.
 

Balthazar

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The f*** they aren't...they're wrong all the damned time, including people in this forum, and I'm no exception.

You're comparing fan sentiment to hard numbers and that's just ridiculous. Fans by their very nature are irrational and prone to snap judgments. They're wrong A LOT. Fan is short for "fanatic" after all. And they're wrong about Kopitar. He's one of the best two-way players to ever play the game, and possibly the biggest reason they got two Cups in the first place. Before that that franchise had nothing apart from Wayne Gretzky leading them to the Cup Final they had NOTHING. If you don't count The Great One you could make an argument that Anze Kopitar is the best player in franchise history. And yes, I'd rank him above Drew Doughty.

The Kings and Blackhawks have been trying like hell to rebuild on the fly and the results have been rather mixed. I think Blake's done a pretty good job getting a completely depleted prospect base back up to snuff but he's also made some mistakes along the way (Kovalchuk signing anyone?). If fans are slagging him then they're a bunch of spoiled idiots.

Los Angeles just isn't that good a team. They haven't been for a while now. Their fans just need to accept that. Lombardi did a ton of damage on his way out the door, and off-ice stuff (which was horribly mishandled by him) made matters worse.
You sound exactly like those people from other boards who were talking about Iginla during his last 2 years here. Can still score goals, one of the best or all time, etc..

Were we irrational to criticize his character and his play?
 

Foppa2118

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A tale of two halves for Compher:

  • January 13th to March 5th:

  • * injured from March 6th to March 19th *

  • March 20th to present:
Getting injured was a blessing in disguise for him. While he was out Jost moved to 3C and did well enough for Compher to move back to the wing where he has 14 points in the last 25 games (46 point pace).

I think the key to this is a consistent role on the wing. Bednar just can't help but try him at center though because of his speed.

Jost has benefitted from the same thing. It's clear to most of us that Compher is a better winger and Jost is a better center, but they've constantly been bounced back and forth their entire career.

The consistency lets them settle in and play their game without overthinking.
 

Pokecheque

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You sound exactly like those people from other boards who were talking about Iginla during his last 2 years here. Can still score goals, one of the best or all time, etc..

Were we irrational to criticize his character and his play?

Yes. Absolutely.

Iginla's failure in Colorado is not entirely on Iginla. In fact, I'd say it's about 99% not Iginla's fault. It can't be understated how horrible Sakic and Roy handled things following that better-than-expected season in 2014. They traded for a washed-up defenseman with zero puck skills in Brad Stuart, and they lost Stastny for nothing. I don't think letting Stazz walk was the wrong move, but using the cap savings on a 38-year-old winger was. It got even worse when they also lost O'Reilly. They lost a shit-ton of near-elite defensive play in those two, and replaced it with virtually nothing. By that time Iggy had aged into a one-dimensional power play specialist. Boston, his previous team, understood this and sheltered him heavily. The Avs didn't and overplayed him to a ridiculous extent. All of the speed and most of the power and strength that defined Iginla as one of the premier talents of his generation was gone. All he had left was a good one-timer that allowed him to remain a reasonably productive player....for one season at least.

It's also on management that they still valued intangibles over actual ability, and even that completely backfired. Erik Johnson said in interviews after that disastrous 2016-17 season that having vets like Iggy and Beauchemin in there was a divisive presence--guys like him and Landeskog were afraid to speak up. That's still not on Iggy though, it was just a really bad decision by management. Iginla and Colorado were just a horrible match from the start. The Avs weren't even close to being ready as we now know, and Iginla was asked to do way too much.

Yes, I know he was quoted as saying that the Avs rebuild wasn't what he signed up for, but I don't see what's wrong with that quote. He didn't sign up for that and the Avs certainly wouldn't have brought him in for those purposes. It's not Iggy's fault the Avs were an abhorrent team that got even further decimated by injuries. That's on management for making a series of terrible decisions based off one fluke run in 2013-14. Even if Iggy really did carry himself like a jerk in that locker room, that is still 100% the fault of management for signing him in the first place. Luckily Sakic learned that lesson and has put a premium on getting defensively capable forwards ever since (Nieto, Calvert, Bellemare, O'Connor, Nichushkin, etc.).

If there's one veteran presence guy I have some disdain for following that season, it's Beauchemin. But even then, the Avs had such a bad defensive corps that at least two guys who played major roles that season (Tyutin and Wiercioch) never saw the NHL again. That's not his fault that he was also overplayed and as a result, exposed terribly on a horrible team. But I still hate seeing pics of him in burgundy, I even called out an Avs fan Twitter account for posting a GIF of him recently. :laugh:

Fans are allowed to have feelings. I still admit I bristle anytime I hear the names Matt Lepsis and Rahim Moore. Neither was a bad player but both were involved with catastrophic events in Broncos history and as a result, I don't really like those guys. But I freely admit that's a totally irrational reaction. But to imply that mob rule somehow leads to logical conclusions is patently absurd. Fans by their very nature ignore logic, that's what fandom mostly is. I'm not saying they ALWAYS get it wrong, but they get it wrong a lot. They're fans, not calm, rational analysts. We're allowed to have takes that are wrong, and we're allowed to change our minds, but Kings fans dissing Kopitar are just sad their team still sucks balls and have picked a convenient target.
 
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MarkT

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BTW, prime example of fans not knowing WTF they're talking about is how much praise gets directed toward Patrick Kane and how much derision (apparently) gets thrown at Anze Kopitar. The fact is, fans look at offensive production and very little else. Understandable to a point. Kane remains a very productive player, but he is now so horribly bad defensively that it almost doesn't matter how much he scores. Conversely, Kopitar remains reasonably productive and reasonably good defensively, but he's never been a flashy superstar who scores a lot, even in his prime. I'd also argue the Kings kinda/sorta did a lousy job putting firepower on his line an around him in the lineup. The Kings likely would've won more than two Cups and utterly dominated their prime contention window had they at least gotten a slick point producer at center to take the workload off of Kopitar. Nowadays he's being asked to do WAY too much at 33 years old.

View attachment 433564

I get those aren't elite defensive numbers for Kopitar either, but you're not gonna get elite defensive numbers on a team as lousy as the Kings are at present.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert of the Kings of Kopitar - I literally only saw him play 8 games this season. However, from what I have seen, if the fans are shitting on him, my suspicion is it's because he's no longer a top line player, but keeps getting played like one. The fans probably have other guys they'd want to get those minutes.

As for Kane, one thing I've noticed is fans tend to be very forgiving of players as long as they're fulfilling their primary role. Many (most?) fans here loved Tyson Barrie because they saw his role as offensive production, and he did just that. It didn't matter to many of those fans how bad Barrie was defensively, just like it doesn't matter how bad Kane is defensively.

Going back to Kopitar, I remember a time when even in these last two games, he would have either scored, set up goals, or been extremely dangerous. Instead, we got maybe a handful of shifts where his line looked vaguely dangerous, and that's it. The thing is, even if the kids step up and Kopitar plays less, the fans will still dislike him because now he's making $10m until 2024 and only playing 3rd line minutes.
 

Pokecheque

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I'm not going to pretend to be an expert of the Kings of Kopitar - I literally only saw him play 8 games this season. However, from what I have seen, if the fans are shitting on him, my suspicion is it's because he's no longer a top line player, but keeps getting played like one. The fans probably have other guys they'd want to get those minutes.

As for Kane, one thing I've noticed is fans tend to be very forgiving of players as long as they're fulfilling their primary role. Many (most?) fans here loved Tyson Barrie because they saw his role as offensive production, and he did just that. It didn't matter to many of those fans how bad Barrie was defensively, just like it doesn't matter how bad Kane is defensively.

Going back to Kopitar, I remember a time when even in these last two games, he would have either scored, set up goals, or been extremely dangerous. Instead, we got maybe a handful of shifts where his line looked vaguely dangerous, and that's it. The thing is, even if the kids step up and Kopitar plays less, the fans will still dislike him because now he's making $10m until 2024 and only playing 3rd line minutes.

Based on these last two games and even going back to earlier series, if the Kings fans really want to focus their ire on a guy, they should pick Doughty, not Kopitar. Dude got absolutely scorched a bunch of times by the Avs in this series, including by the fourth friggin' line for a goal.

That's not to say he sucks either, he's just a far cry from what he was in his prime. I agree though, the vets on this team aren't top line/top pairing guys anymore. Just because they're getting paid like they are doesn't mean they are.

In a way I don't mind the "reward contract". It ain't my money, and the team made a shit-ton more than what they're paying those two. Same goes with Kane and Toews in Chicago. I don't even care if the Avs do that with the vets they have now--there could be worse situations if this core wins a couple Cups or more, it'll all be worth it.
 

MarkT

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Based on these last two games and even going back to earlier series, if the Kings fans really want to focus their ire on a guy, they should pick Doughty, not Kopitar. Dude got absolutely scorched a bunch of times by the Avs in this series, including by the fourth friggin' line for a goal.

That's not to say he sucks either, he's just a far cry from what he was in his prime. I agree though, the vets on this team aren't top line/top pairing guys anymore. Just because they're getting paid like they are doesn't mean they are.

In a way I don't mind the "reward contract". It ain't my money, and the team made a shit-ton more than what they're paying those two. Same goes with Kane and Toews in Chicago. I don't even care if the Avs do that with the vets they have now--there could be worse situations if this core wins a couple Cups or more, it'll all be worth it.

I've had this debate far too often but I disagree with your last point. Yeah, those teams won their cups, but by signing two players each to massive contracts, they decreased their chances of winning consistently until those contracts are over. Long contracts signed before winning the cup are forgivable because they're presumably based on how good the player is now and how good they project to be in the future. Reward contracts signed after winning are almost always based on how good the player used to be (or at most how good they are at the time), with zero consideration for how good they'll be at the end of the contract. The reality of a cap league is that if you've got two players making $10m+ but not playing like top players, you'll probably struggle to even make the playoffs, let alone win the cup. I think well-run NHL teams should always be either building towards being the best team in the league or trying to remain the best team in the league. Any move that's going to lead to consistent mediocrity is a mistake. And by mediocrity I mean consistently barely missing the playoffs, or consistently making them but never being a contender.
 

Pokecheque

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I've had this debate far too often but I disagree with your last point. Yeah, those teams won their cups, but by signing two players each to massive contracts, they decreased their chances of winning consistently until those contracts are over. Long contracts signed before winning the cup are forgivable because they're presumably based on how good the player is now and how good they project to be in the future. Reward contracts signed after winning are almost always based on how good the player used to be (or at most how good they are at the time), with zero consideration for how good they'll be at the end of the contract. The reality of a cap league is that if you've got two players making $10m+ but not playing like top players, you'll probably struggle to even make the playoffs, let alone win the cup. I think well-run NHL teams should always be either building towards being the best team in the league or trying to remain the best team in the league. Any move that's going to lead to consistent mediocrity is a mistake. And by mediocrity I mean consistently barely missing the playoffs, or consistently making them but never being a contender.

I get all that, but teams rarely, if ever operate that way. Fans say they always want teams to either be rebuilding or going for it but there’s other factors at play. How many of us would’ve been okay with Joe Sakic and Milan Hejduk playing out the string for other teams? I know I wouldn’t. It’s one thing to say you’re okay with dumping core players overboard once the window slams shut, it’s entirely another to actually see it happen.

I’m not arguing in favor of reward contracts but I see why they’re done, and like it or not those players still draw fans and make the organization money. And it’s not necessarily the reward deals that mess things up, it’s the deals GMs make to try and keep the window open longer that normally backfire. Lombardi, Bowman, and Poile have all been guilty of this. The only reward contract that never made any sense to me was the one for Seabrook. Of all the core members of that team,

Anyway, I’d actually like to see a team actually do it by the numbers. Once the team is essentially done, pull the plug, reload, sell off the important assets. That’d be interesting to see.
 
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