Post-Game Talk: [GM 3] Vancouver Canucks @ Washington Capitals | 4 - 6 Loss (Pettersson, Horvat, Lazar, Miller)

[4Twenty]

Did you actually watch that season?

Myers led the team in ES TOI and played 60% of his ES minutes with Edler or Hughes. 'Locked into the 3rd pairing nearly the entire season' is totally incorrect BS. He did have a stretch with Fantenberg but that was when Edler was hurt and the 3rd pairing was Stecher-Benn.

He was also actually fairly solid for most of the season and better than I expected as someone who hated the signing. Then he was absolutely tragic in the bubble, both before and after getting hurt.

It isn't 'chalking it up to hurt feelings'. It's understanding that people underperform when they're in a terrible environment with no leadership or direction. Surely almost everyone has been in a job situation like this and the NHL is no different. I said the same thing consistently when Benning was still here - we won't know what we really have in this team until we see the players in a good situation in a properly run organization. This was an absolutely miserable group between the bubble and Benning's firing.

A “stretch” with Fantenburg that was longer then he played with Hughes.

At that teams peak he was on the 3rd pair.

Edler performed miles better without him and the team couldn’t defend adequately against top 2 line comp while with Hughes.

Great a 3rd pair who can move up when chasing but got absolutely dominated on the scoreboard from the 3rd pair minutes.


I still can’t believe one would regard last nights first period as good.

To each their own. You can have the last word.

 

[MS]

Please. Did you?

Let's go through it again. Edler - Myers played most of their games together early in the season. They started off hot together and then played bad together. They used Hughes - Myers as their push pair when they were down in games to try to generate offense.

They started the season with Edler - Myers, Hughes - Tanev, Benn - Stecher. You're right he wasn't "locked into the 3rd pairing" - but they absolutely did turn to him playing predominantly with Fantenberg by the end of the year.

I do agree that he wasn't awful that year. His awful year was the 2021 bubble season, where he legitimately looked like a bottom pairing defenseman.

Maybe there's another world where they force on with Edler-Myers for an entire season like they did with OEL-Myers and they go through similar ups and downs, but on the whole, their outputs are similar. I can buy that.

Here's my summation of Myers so far.

He played like a 3.5 million dollar defenseman in his first year. He played like a 2 million dollar one in the second year. He played like a 5 million dollar one last year.

I watched nearly every game.

Myers led the team in ES TOI.
He played 60% of his minutes with the #2 and #3 players in ES TOI.
He also played 27% with Fantenberg, which superficially looks like '3rd pairing'.

However, the Fantenberg icetime was mainly when Edler was injured in December, in games like this :

Vegas Golden Knights vs. Vancouver Canucks Box Score: December 19, 2019 | Hockey-Reference.com

Get the latest box score updates on the Vegas Golden Knights vs. Vancouver Canucks game played on December 19, 2019 on Hockey-Reference.com

www.hockey-reference.com

Pairings were Tanev-Hughes, Myers-Fantenberg, Stecher-Benn.

Stating that he was 'locked onto the 3rd pairing almost all year' is just total nonsense.

He also started the playoffs with Edler before getting hurt.

What's he supposed to do to express surpise during live play at something he probably barely registered at the time?

I mean, yeah?

You see this all the time when a player hits a guy from behind or something and they immediately express regret and check on the injured guy. You don't accidently pole-axe someone in the face and then your immediate reaction is 'HIT HIM AGAIN!'.

 

[VancouverJagger]

Haven't you heard? Everyone lights their pitchforks now. Better visibility for the night stabbing.

Oops, ha.

I'm seeing a lot of the people mocking the 60-game Bruce Bump as a crazy aberration who are now almost gleeful about what's happened in a 3-game sample size.

What I see is a team that was a 92-point team last year that should clearly improve on that, both through additions and internal development, and presumably because the team's top player in Pettersson won't be utterly useless through the first 40 games of the year. And I'm not going to decide if that take was a good or bad one until I see 15 or 20 games from this team. Not 3.

It's strange seeing you on the side of supporting management and the team. Not that I'm complaining seeing a veteran like you around here being the voice of reason.

It's a little early to be jumping off the ledge however with our history you can't really blame the natives.......we've ben soo beaten down over almost the last decade that we are conditioned to expect the worst.

Let's at least see how this team looks with our prized penalty killer in the fold and Myers back.........

 

[MS]

A “stretch” with Fantenburg that was longer then he played with Hughes.

At that teams peak he was on the 3rd pair.

Edler performed miles better without him and the team couldn’t defend adequately against top 2 line comp while with Hughes.

Great a 3rd pair who can move up when chasing but got absolutely dominated on the scoreboard from the 3rd pair minutes.


I still can’t believe one would regard last nights first period as good.

To each their own. You can have the last word.

We can have a discussion all day about how well he played in top-4 minutes but your claims that he was on the 3rd pairing almost all year are just absolute total easily disproven nonsense and render everything else you're saying basically worthless. I actually can't believe you're doubling down on this.

 

[Peen]

I watched nearly every game.

Myers led the team in ES TOI.
He played 60% of his minutes with the #2 and #3 players in ES TOI.
He also played 27% with Fantenberg, which superficially looks like '3rd pairing'.

However, the Fantenberg icetime was mainly when Edler was injured in December, in games like this :

Vegas Golden Knights vs. Vancouver Canucks Box Score: December 19, 2019 | Hockey-Reference.com

Get the latest box score updates on the Vegas Golden Knights vs. Vancouver Canucks game played on December 19, 2019 on Hockey-Reference.com

www.hockey-reference.com

Pairings were Tanev-Hughes, Myers-Fantenberg, Stecher-Benn.

Stating that he was 'locked onto the 3rd pairing almost all year' is just total nonsense.

He also started the playoffs with Edler before getting hurt.



I mean, yeah?

You see this all the time when a player hits a guy from behind or something and they immediately express regret and check on the injured guy. You don't accidently pole-axe someone in the face and then your immediate reaction is 'HIT HIM AGAIN!'.

First bolded - only said that because you said that to the other poster. Second bolded - I didn't say that.

Again, there's context to what you're saying here. You're just throwing out minute totals. In terms of deployment, he played an OEL-Myers type role with Edler the first 1/4-1/3rd of that season. His minutes with Hughes were primarily in push situations when we were down needing offense - and it worked because they would score at a fairly good rate when paired together in those circumstances. By the end of the year, they were sticking with Stecher.

There's also a reason that they stuck with Stecher and Edler in the playoffs.. it was working and Myers wasn't playing well in those playoffs.

Here's a good tool if you want to go through. Natural stat trick keeps gamelogs with linemate icetimes.

Example game from late in that year before we started freefalling: https://www.naturalstattrick.com/game.php?season=20192020&game=20969#gameflow

Obviously, this is one game. I clicked on one random one and that's who he played with in that game conveniently in the favor of my argument.

I don't think he was that bad in year one. He was just average - frankly, same could have been said for Tanev that year to the point where you could somewhat understand the hesitations in signing him (which instantly reversed the second I saw the peanuts he signed in Calgary for and the fact he would have taken LESS!! than that to stay here in total money).

 

[MS]

First bolded - only said that because you said that to the other poster. Second bolded - I didn't say that.

Again, there's context to what you're saying here. You're just throwing out minute totals. In terms of deployment, he played an OEL-Myers type role with Edler the first 1/4-1/3rd of that season. His minutes with Hughes were primarily in push situations when we were down needing offense - and it worked because they would score at a fairly good rate when paired together in those circumstances. By the end of the year, they were sticking with Stecher.

There's also a reason that they stuck with Stecher and Edler in the playoffs.. it was working and Myers wasn't playing well in those playoffs.

Here's a good tool if you want to go through. Natural stat trick keeps gamelogs with linemate icetimes.

Example game from late in that year before we started freefalling: https://www.naturalstattrick.com/game.php?season=20192020&game=20969#gameflow

View attachment 595575

Obviously, this is one game. I clicked on one random one and that's who he played with in that game conveniently in the favor of my argument.

I don't think he was that bad in year one. He was just average - frankly, same could have been said for Tanev that year to the point where you could somewhat understand the hesitations in signing him (which instantly reversed the second I saw the peanuts he signed in Calgary for and the fact he would have taken LESS!! than that to stay here in total money).

He played with Hughes consistently for about a month. It didn't work out well and Hughes was much better with Tanev.

Again, I'm not really interested in getting into an argument about how well he played. My take generally agrees with yours that he was an average overpaid 2nd pairing defender that year, but whatever. I'm disagreeing with the notion that he was 'on the 3rd pairing almost all year'. It's just blatantly false.

He played a few games near the end of the year on a high-minute '3rd pairing' when they tried running 3 equal pairings and also played with Fantenberg in December on what was the 2nd pairing at that point. He was getting top 4 minutes for the vast majority of that season.

 

[mathonwy]

 

[mossey3535]

I agree with you here. PK/goalies struggles/calls is something that is going to balance out over a season. Hopefully.

Something that I have found really interesting is that Thatcher Demko is one of the best goalies in the league at 5v5. 2nd highest gsaa last year at 5v5. But terrible on the PK. 4th last in GSAA last year, and is struggling again this year. @mossey3535 might be able to explain this, but its weird. Something to keep an eye on.

Well the PK unit itself has been a very bad. A good PK still will mostly eliminate the things that make PPs dangerous in the first place - cross crease plays and shooters with time and space.

Although these are the things that get to most goalies, Demko still has a lot of tendencies that make him susceptible.

Last night we saw him give up a Nilsson-esque early drop into post integration goal. You're only supposed to do that when the shooter is basically point blank - whether or not their angle is bad. His habit is to get his foot on his post early and in the worst case drop against his post early. PP shooters have time and space so they can exploit that minute mistake in positioning.

Also despite improving a lot of his "drill skill" in terms of lateral movement in the past seasons, in the actual game he often blindly pushes across and does not have early visual lead on the pass. Physically this selling out means he is out of control on lateral plays and is often not ready to make a reaction or even just set save once he gets there. Since PP is all about lateral plays, he is often burned by this.

His play reading is about average. Since PP sets up plays, this is a detriment.


Finally, he is only ok at fighting through screens. Since most pp have time to set up purpose screens in layers, this works against him.

Demko is extraordinarily talented at stopping open shots when he's set first, amazing at improvisational and battle saves where he doesn't have to move across the entire crease, and quite good at stopping rush dekes. These are situations which are more prevalent in ES play.

 

[ChuckNorris4Cup]

I’ll take once in 3 games , is that reasonable?

Better then every game, but this kind of crap though has been happening since Markstrom was here, constantly relying on the goalie to bail this team out year after year.

 

[Orca Smash]

Deleted

 

[tantalum]

How’d I get in this thread?