Hartford Wolf Pack (AHL) / Maine Mariners (ECHL) 2018-19: Part IX
- Thread starter Gardner McKay
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TheTakedown
Puck is Life
- Jul 11, 2012
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Yeah I never thought they took the best player available at that pick, they knew gropp from his bchl team that they had scouted other prospects at in his pre-draft year.
2015 was a stinker for us, and of course that first round was a doozy we missed out on.
bleedblue94
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2004
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It's funny bc while Gropp going to Maine is a kick in the pants for him and the fans, I think it also shows how much more depth this organization has. Not long ago Gropp even at his current level would be in Hartford getting pumped like a tire with a nail in it...
Yes, gone are the days where Danny Kristo and Christian Thomas were guys we cared about.
Rongomania
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Ghost of jas
Unsatisfied
Flag on the play...since Kristo and Thomas were traded for each other, the time you described could not exist.
Rongomania
Registered User
It's a shame. His last year in juniors, I thought he was excellent despite riding Barzal's coattails. Drove the next, shot the puck. But since he's entered the pros, he looks like a guy that doesn't enjoy the game at all. One of the most disengaged players in the last two pre-seasons despite getting a look.
I'd terminate his contract to send a standard.
What's sad is that they had Gropp as their 6th best forward prospect among that group from the post-draft interviews. That's a major league miss. Take the fact that Gropp was a late birthday on top of that, there was an extra year to get eyes on.
There's a reason why a bunch of us have been harping about how bad the western scouts for the Rangers were.
They can't unilaterally terminate his contract. It would have to be mutual or a buyout.
Either way, I don't think I'd want to go that far. He has one year left, maybe in a one-in-a-million shot the light goes on.
Maine heading to a shootout.
Gropp had 1+1 and Day an assist. Ronning didn't even have a shot.
Probably too late to matter, but Halverson is having a pretty good year for Maine.
EDIT: Halverson stopped all 3 on top of the 47 saves he made during the game, Gropp scored the lone SO goal, and Maine won 5-4.
Gropp had 1+1 and Day an assist. Ronning didn't even have a shot.
Probably too late to matter, but Halverson is having a pretty good year for Maine.
EDIT: Halverson stopped all 3 on top of the 47 saves he made during the game, Gropp scored the lone SO goal, and Maine won 5-4.
| Date | Player | Team | Transaction | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-12-11 | Steven Fogarty (C) | Hartford | ADD | Returned on loan from NY Rangers (NHL) |
| 2018-12-11 | Cole Schneider (LW) | Hartford | ADD | Returned on loan from NY Rangers (NHL) |
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
Osminator
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Osminator
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LOL, Georgiev now 0-5 in his 5 game AHL stint.
I'd cancel the flight back to Hartford and make them ride a bus home from Charlotte... what a weak 2 games in Charlotte.
I'd cancel the flight back to Hartford and make them ride a bus home from Charlotte... what a weak 2 games in Charlotte.
He's a guy on an ECHL contract to Maine that has been lent to HFD a couple times.
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
From my perspective about 12 rows back on the blue line, Hartford was the better team for the first and most of the 2nd period. Checkers didn’t generate much. It was a lot like watching the Rangers. Start the game as the better team and let the opponent back in on the power play. Checkers only had 11 shots after two periods.
All I really cared about was seeing Hajek and Lindgren. Both seemed to play solid, but quiet games. I liked what I saw from them. The rest of the team is a bunch of meh. Meskanen was really a non-factor. Gettinger didn’t do much. Neither did Lettieri, aside from getting under people’s skin. Crawley was there, but I only really noticed him playing physical in front of the net.
O’Gara was really bad.
Granted, while going to games is way more fun than watching on TV, I find it much harder to assess what I’m seeing.
Frequent visitor, but i don't post much... It's always amazing to me to see how people analyze prospects. It's quite obvious that Hayek and Lindgren are a year or two away. If you watched the Hartford games religiously you'd notice how sheltered they both are from the other teams top lines. But people want so desperately for their prospects to be great. Bigras and O'Gara have been playing against the other teams top line all year and also have the best plus/minus on the team. While I believe that both Hayek and Lindgren will be servicable NHL D-men, they will not be top 2, top 4 at best. Hayek struggles with confidence and while Lindgren plays a hard nosed style, he needs to develop more physically. I guess the analysis of O'Gara was based on him being a half second late on the PP goal by Charlotte. He was easily the most physical player on the ice for the Pack, but he's easy to pick on. He's just as good if not better than Cleasson, Staal, Smith and McQuaid (and Skjei at the moment) but unfortunately for him has a two way contract. Hayek was horrible on Charlotte's first goal allowing his man to beat him one on one with speed to the outside. Something he's struggled with this year. Crawley and Gilmour are probably the two best offensive D-men, along with Bigras, but they are terrible defensively...
Charlotte is the top team in the conference. The Pack played two very good defensive games this past weekend against them (giving up a total of only 46 shots in both games) but couldn't score the timely goal when needed. The two rookies that were scoring goals early in the season have gone silent (Meskanan & Gettinger).
The talent is thin down in Hartford. All part of re-stocking your prospect pool as an organization. The Rangers are moving in the right direction but are still a work in progress. I understand that this is Hockey's Future, but people need to stop judging prospects thru rose colored glasses. These D-men are still projects with a ceiling. Much like you're witnessing on the Rangers, Howden, Anderson and Chytil, still need time. In my opinion, Gorton and Clark better have hit a home run with Kravstov and they better perform well in this year's draft. Even so, I don't think NY will demonstrate the patience needed to really re-build the team. The next GM will probably derive the benefits of the past year's draft and the upcoming one. If the Rangers were smart, they'd put themselves in position for a potentially generational talent they'd get with a top three pick much like Toronto did in their first year with Babcock. Still plenty of season left with decisions to be made on Zucc, Hayes, McQuaid, etc... Not sure if the Rangers possess the talent necessary for a partial re-build.
Sorry for the rant, just thought you'd like a true assessment of what's going on in Hartford.
Charlotte is the top team in the conference. The Pack played two very good defensive games this past weekend against them (giving up a total of only 46 shots in both games) but couldn't score the timely goal when needed. The two rookies that were scoring goals early in the season have gone silent (Meskanan & Gettinger).
The talent is thin down in Hartford. All part of re-stocking your prospect pool as an organization. The Rangers are moving in the right direction but are still a work in progress. I understand that this is Hockey's Future, but people need to stop judging prospects thru rose colored glasses. These D-men are still projects with a ceiling. Much like you're witnessing on the Rangers, Howden, Anderson and Chytil, still need time. In my opinion, Gorton and Clark better have hit a home run with Kravstov and they better perform well in this year's draft. Even so, I don't think NY will demonstrate the patience needed to really re-build the team. The next GM will probably derive the benefits of the past year's draft and the upcoming one. If the Rangers were smart, they'd put themselves in position for a potentially generational talent they'd get with a top three pick much like Toronto did in their first year with Babcock. Still plenty of season left with decisions to be made on Zucc, Hayes, McQuaid, etc... Not sure if the Rangers possess the talent necessary for a partial re-build.
Sorry for the rant, just thought you'd like a true assessment of what's going on in Hartford.
I agree with some of this. I've seen probably 6 or 7 games this year and parts of a few others so I'm obviously speaking based on a more limited viewing sample than you appear to be.
Hajek makes mistakes like any rookie. I don't know if it's due to confidence. He doesn't look much different to me now than he did to begin the year so unless he came in with no confidence, I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe that. Maybe you're right though. Lindgren may need to add muscle to continue to play his style as he moves up, but in general I would not say his physical development is an issue at this level.
I agree that Crawley is terrible defensively but I do not think he's good offensively. He's been lucky this year to put up the points that he has, but he's also putting up those points because he seems to have decided he no longer wants to be the physical, stay-at-home D that he has always been. He's not good offensively. Like if Marc Staal decided he wanted to try to be Erik Karlsson he could put up points. That's what Crawley has been this year. Last year he was mediocre/below-average last season across the board, but he was still way better defensively then than what I've seen this year.
Bigras is good. I've been wanting him to get a look. Agree there. Totally disagree about O'Gara, at least insofar as he's better than all of these guys on the Rangers. I liked him last year--as the season wound down he got better. I think he can be a good 7 in this league, maybe an okay 6 on a team thin defensively. I don't think he's close to Claesson, or Staal. He's a slightly worse McQuaid. If Smith is on it's not close. If Smith is living in la-la land, yeah, I might say O'Gara is better. His two-way isn't a big deal since that only affects his salary. The Rangers wouldn't want to waive Claesson and lose him, so he's really the only one with an advantage over O'Gara in that respect. They've shown they'll waive Smith to send him down. They can't move Staal down. They like McQuaid. But regardless--O'Gara isn't that good.
The biggest issue I have here, is that through 25 games in their rookie campaigns, you've already established what Hajek and Lindgren will and will not become. Using your Crawley comments--if you watched him last year there was literally zero to suggest he'd have 9 points in 20 or whatever games. Gilmour was night and day from his rookie campaign to his second season. I mean, guys develop, and it takes time. I just think it's foolhardy to decry that a guy is at best a second-pairing defender (implying that there's a good chance he's not even that) when he's been highly-regarded for years and is just starting in the professional game. That doesn't seem like a true assessment, or at least, not really a fair one.
Always hard to judge from just one game: even the best of players have nights where they look bad and the worst of players looks good.
So, I must admit that Saturday was the first time I have seen Hartford in person this year.
The lack of offensive talent on the team is obvious and points to the biggest need in the organization. The Pack have some pretty good AHL "lifers," Holland (that is what is career arc seems to be pointing to) and Schneider. Neither are NHL players for longer than brief stretches. There are some marginal NHLers here like Fogarty and Lettieri. Gettinger also looks like a marginal NHL guy but he is young yet and somewhat overachieving. He is an intriguing player because of his size.
As for the D, I was most interested in the D and while neither Hayek or Lindgren stood out, I thought both played solid and fairly well. Scary to think that at the end of last year O'Gara and Gilmour were 1/3 of our D. Gilmour can skate but has little else. Sorry, I don't see O'Gara has an NHL D (I wouldn't mind being proven wrong). He didn't look like one last year and didn't look like one against Charlotte. To say that he is better than Staal, Smith, Cleasson, and McQuaid is just wrong. Yeah, Smith has proven to be a mirage. He is the guy who played himself down and out of the lineup in Detroit. McQuaid is, at best a 3rd pair D, better off an an extra #7. Staal, even at his "advanced" age is far beyond O'Gara. Cleasson; I still don't have a handle on him: sometimes I'm impressed, other nights not at all.
Watching Hartford live and the Rangers on TV the last few games brought home on fact to me: for all our rebuild and the young guys up with the big club, plus Hayek and Lindgren in the AHL, plus all the guys we are waiting for in the NCAA and KHL, we still don't have enough young talent where I can see us competing with the young emerging teams in the east (Toronto, Buffalo) in a few years. We need more. More #1 round draft picks. The need to trade Hayes (who I think is a really fine player) and Zucc (hopefully he will get on a roll so he can bring back more than a #2) is evident. We need as many first round picks as we can get. The talent net is not wide enough yet. It's like that Geico commercial: more, more more.
So, I must admit that Saturday was the first time I have seen Hartford in person this year.
The lack of offensive talent on the team is obvious and points to the biggest need in the organization. The Pack have some pretty good AHL "lifers," Holland (that is what is career arc seems to be pointing to) and Schneider. Neither are NHL players for longer than brief stretches. There are some marginal NHLers here like Fogarty and Lettieri. Gettinger also looks like a marginal NHL guy but he is young yet and somewhat overachieving. He is an intriguing player because of his size.
As for the D, I was most interested in the D and while neither Hayek or Lindgren stood out, I thought both played solid and fairly well. Scary to think that at the end of last year O'Gara and Gilmour were 1/3 of our D. Gilmour can skate but has little else. Sorry, I don't see O'Gara has an NHL D (I wouldn't mind being proven wrong). He didn't look like one last year and didn't look like one against Charlotte. To say that he is better than Staal, Smith, Cleasson, and McQuaid is just wrong. Yeah, Smith has proven to be a mirage. He is the guy who played himself down and out of the lineup in Detroit. McQuaid is, at best a 3rd pair D, better off an an extra #7. Staal, even at his "advanced" age is far beyond O'Gara. Cleasson; I still don't have a handle on him: sometimes I'm impressed, other nights not at all.
Watching Hartford live and the Rangers on TV the last few games brought home on fact to me: for all our rebuild and the young guys up with the big club, plus Hayek and Lindgren in the AHL, plus all the guys we are waiting for in the NCAA and KHL, we still don't have enough young talent where I can see us competing with the young emerging teams in the east (Toronto, Buffalo) in a few years. We need more. More #1 round draft picks. The need to trade Hayes (who I think is a really fine player) and Zucc (hopefully he will get on a roll so he can bring back more than a #2) is evident. We need as many first round picks as we can get. The talent net is not wide enough yet. It's like that Geico commercial: more, more more.
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