Prongo
Beer
Whoa pal calm down. No need to get angry tiger.Thats not at all what Im saying and Im not your bud.
Whoa pal calm down. No need to get angry tiger.Thats not at all what Im saying and Im not your bud.
This illustrates perfectly my problem with Hextall as a GM.
Not angry in the slightest.Whoa pal calm down. No need to get angry tiger.
Thats not at all what Im saying and Im not your bud.
Again, there wasn't a rat's hair of difference between Lehtera, Leier, Weise and Read.
And the PK in the playoffs with Lehtera was one of the best units (SSS but hey, they did stop the best PP in the league).
So obsessing over his 10 minutes of TOI is simply a proxy for dislike of Hakstol, and not an educated critique.
The problem with Lehtera isn't the effect he had last year. The real problem is what his usage means going forward.
If Hakstol can't see that he had better options available, then his player evaluation in the future will continue being a problem, even if Lehtera isn't the one he's overusing. Lehtera is a temporary problem, Hakstol's lack of common sense is a continual problem.
Luckily Hakstols toys are slowly being taken away, so even if Lehtera is here next year, he'll be gone the next, and replaced by a superior player. Vandevelde is gone, Manning is gone, Filppula appears to be gone, Lehtera will soon be gone, and we have plenty of people to fill those holes already.
Then respond to something I actually posed to you rather than tell me how you're disappointed in my mentality.
I posed a question: What did it really change? Would we have done much better?
Hak's inexplicable over usage of Lehtera cost the team points in the standings and re-tarded the growth of genuine prospects like Laughton and Sanheim. Your argument seems to be that it's OK for the Flyers to voluntarily shoot themselves in the foot if they only lose a pinky toe.
Hak's inexplicable over usage of Lehtera cost the team points in the standings and re-tarded the growth of genuine prospects like Laughton and Sanheim. Your argument seems to be that it's OK for the Flyers to voluntarily shoot themselves in the foot if they only lose a pinky toe.
Its hard to have a real discussion with someone trying to justify Lehtera's spot on the team. Im just being honest.
The only reason you defend Lehtera is as a proxy for the coach you're in love with. He was useless at ES, on the PP and PK and no other coach in the league would have used him the way Simple Hak did.
I'm genuinely serious when I ask this: what do you mean by overusage?
Who's complaining about Lehtera playing over Leier on the PK? We're talking about Laughton. Hell, I bet Scotty could have come up with a point or two in 35 minutes of PP time if Hak wasn't force feeding it to a veteran slug.
He played 62 games when there was no reason for him to play more than 20-25 when multiple injuries struck.
He was used regularly on PP2 despite being so useless that he didn't score a single point.
He was one of the regular penalty killers in the second half of the season despite being ranked the 2nd worst by GA/60.
And there were always better options available: notably Sanheim on PP2; Laughton and Read on the PK.
Again, there wasn't a rat's hair of difference between Lehtera, Leier, Weise and Read.
And the PK in the playoffs with Lehtera was one of the best units (SSS but hey, they did stop the best PP in the league).
So obsessing over his 10 minutes of TOI is simply a proxy for dislike of Hakstol, and not an educated critique.
The real problem was having these four as your "depth," not which two of these four was actually dressed for games.
And if you watched some of the AHL playoffs, it's obvious that guys like NAK and Vorobyev and MV weren't ready for prime time and wouldn't have been upgrades last season.
This is nobody's fault (well, Hextall dealing with Holmgren's mess) - depth players tend to be later round picks and they take 5-7 years to make the NHL for the most part (the few that do), and Hextall didn't inherit much, Laughton, Leier, Cousins, VdV, McGinn, Rinaldo. He's drafted a bunch of guys who'll provide this kind of depth in a couple years, just look at the Lehigh roster this year and next year.
And yes, Rinaldo and a dozen other forwards were worse than Lehtera last year.
This is one reason to be wary of trading prospects until the Lehigh lineup is packed with NHL capable players - injuries happen, and you want depth in your organization so you don't have to play scrubs.
What's the deal with people being obsessed with Lehtera playing over guys like Leier, Golbourne, Vecchione?
Listen, I would rather see Leier and Vecchione play over him too, but who the hell cares in the end?
Seriously.
Does it change our team drastically either way? Will we all of a sudden have a good bottom 6 if one of them replaces Lehtera? Will we have made a deep playoff run? Would we be a top team?
If they're paying a guy a billion dollars to play and he's comparable to other players in the organization, I can understand wanting to play him instead of making kids play bottom minutes when they could get big minutes in the minors. Remember: you can almost never overcook a prospect, but you can undercook one.
It's just another one of those things that people who hate Hakstol (and to many degrees Hextall) cling onto. Now, I don't like Hak, but I can get over that with an improved roster this offseason. Using Lehtera's whopping 10:46 TOI/GP as a reason why Hextall is an idiot is just...really, really bad.
Summary: I don't like Lehtera there either, but he didn't prevent us or anyone else from doing something amazing this past season. We all know what it is: get through his contract (maybe even lucky enough to get a buyout this offseason) and we'll move on from him in exchange for a bonus 1st rounder this year. It's obscenely insignificant; then again, I'm very goal-oriented and I don't actively get weighed down by silly things like a 4th line player when we're not realistically competing for the Cup.
I’d wait and see what happens before bashing them about it then. Whether we like it or not, when a player is making more than 4.5 million a year, it’s hard to bury him for 2 full years. Now if you want to criticize taking him back in the Schenn trade, that’s a different argument, but it was necessary to get two first round picks.
If he’s playing this year as anything more than the 13th forward, then I’ll be on the same page.
Isn't that ideally how it should go, though?
A coach being able to decide who actually plays for the team seems ideal to me. Now, you can argue he's wrong of course, but GMs going with coaches' decisions to play people is a pretty normal thing.
I'll save a spot for you on Page # We're ****ed.
It's like the offseason starts and people forget who our coach is.
very weak bottom four D
very weak bottom 6
and still came in third in a division where the first two teams were the last two cup champs. No way Hak gets fired or should he despite some questionable decisions. As many said early last year, Hak is here for the length of his contract until we don't make the playoffs or our young players regress.
Forwards are the least of our problems and easiest to solve.
There's no excuse for a weak bottom 6 next season. The top 9 is already solid, and the 4th line hasn't had any additions from free agency or the AHL yet, and the Flyers have tons of cap space
Literally everyone is arguing about pointless ****. Holy ****.