Miscellaneous NHL Discussion LVII: Countdown to June 2nd and the draft lottery

[Beef Invictus]

Canes managed to miss the playoffs 9 straight seasons, and I don't think they were deliberately tanking.
And it wasn't even by terrible drafting, but some funky management:

2009: Paradis #27, Dumoulin #51 (traded with Sutter and 2012 1st [Pouliot] for Jordan Staal)
2010: Skinner #7, Faulk #37, Anderson G #187
2011: Murphy #12, Rask C #42
2012: Di Guiseppe #38, B McGinn #52, Slavin #120
2013: Lindholm #5, Pesce #36
2014: Fleury #7, Nedeljkovic G #37, Foegele #67
2015: Hanifin #5, Aho #35, Lorenz #186
2016: Bean #13, Gaither #21, Kuokkanen #43
2017: Necas #12, Luostarinen #42
2018: Svechnikov #2

They were build much like the Flyers, while they had more high picks, all but Svechnikov have been traded or allowed to walk.
Waddell took over in summer of 2018:
6/23/18 - Hamilton, Ferland and Fox for Hanifin and Lindholm
8/2/18 - 2019 2nd, 2020 3rd for Skinner
1/17/19 - Niederreiter for Rask
4/30/19 - 2019 2nd, 2020 3rd for Fox
9/24/19 - Edmundson for Faulk [then Edmundson for 5th rd pick]
2/24/20 - Skjei for 2020 1st
2/24/20 - Trocheck for Haula, Wallmark, Luuostarinen
10/10/20 - signed Fast
4/12/21 - Hakanpaa and 6th rd pick for Fleury

What is interesting is Carolina lost in terms of "value" in most of their trades.
They had five picks in the top 10, 4 which were traded away, garnering Hamilton, Hakanpaa and a 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th rd pick
The rebuild started with the 2012 draft (after wasting 3 years), less about the top picks but about adding 2+ starters a draft for a long period.
That critical mass allowed them to trade for Hamilton, give a 1st for Skjei.

Took 7 years from when the rebuild started to make the playoffs, two more years to be a legitimate contender.
Which counsels patience with the current Flyers, as long as you keep adding 2+ players a draft, eventually it should pay off.

They happened to find a coach who knows what to do with their roster too, and willing to let players play to their strengths rather than demolishing them. As I've said for years, coaching is mega important. Especially so in the cap era.

The Flyers have shown no indication that they're interested in finding quality coaching. Coaching for this team exists to perpetuate the Hockey Guy Country Club.

 

[flyersnorth]

The Leafs have not won a playoff series since 2004.

I honestly would not have guessed that. I knew they had some down years, but didn't realize the playoff futility stretched back 17 years.

Go Habs.

f*** the Leafs.

 

[BernieParent]

Pesce, one of the better defenders in the league, had the 3rd highest offensive WAR this season for defensemen. That’s nuts. Gotta like Staal being the X factor too on this young team. He’s the oldest starting skater at 32! Everyone else is sub-30.

Love
My
Canes

There is a nice irony in highlighting the young age of a team whose nickname is the Canes.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

The Leafs have not won a playoff series since 2004.

I honestly would not have guessed that. I knew they had some down years, but didn't realize the playoff futility stretched back 17 years.

Go Habs.

f*** the Leafs.

I don't care about this playoffs other than I want Pittsburgh OUT. Rooting hard for the Islanders to finish the job.

 

[BernieParent]

The Leafs have not won a playoff series since 2004.

I honestly would not have guessed that. I knew they had some down years, but didn't realize the playoff futility stretched back 17 years.

Go Habs.

f*** the Leafs.

As a native Montrealer I say this through jaw-cracking gritted teeth but Toronto plays an entertaining offensive system that I wish the Flyers would play. It obviously helps to have Matthews and Marner leading it, but every unit is constantly moving in the offensive zone, the passing is crisp and deliberate, and they are very good at finding the defensive cracks. Getting production from Spezza, Thornton, and Galchenyuk is just icing on a pretty tasty cake. Any Leafs success is immensely grating to the rest of Canada hockey fans given the fawning adulation of the major broadcasters, but hockey would be better served if the Leafs won rather than the team trying to turn this into a mudpit wrestling match.

I am going to go and take multiple showers now.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

As a native Montrealer I say this through jaw-cracking gritted teeth but Toronto plays an entertaining offensive system that I wish the Flyers would play. It obviously helps to have Matthews and Marner leading it, but every unit is constantly moving in the offensive zone, the passing is crisp and deliberate, and they are very good at finding the defensive cracks. Getting production from Spezza, Thornton, and Galchenyuk is just icing on a pretty tasty cake. Any Leafs success is immensely grating to the rest of Canada hockey fans given the fawning adulation of the major broadcasters, but hockey would be better served if the Leafs won rather than the team trying to turn this into a mudpit wrestling match.

I am going to go and take multiple showers now.

The Flyers don’t have anywhere close to the personnel to play that way. Hell, the Flyers can barely complete passes. Toronto’s top 5 scorers include two #1 overall picks (Matthews, Tavares), a #4 overall (Marner), a #8 overall (Nylander), a #5 overall on D (Rielly), & then they have Galchenyuk (#3 overall), Thornton (#1 overall), & Spezza (#2 overall) as depth.

The Flyers have two top 10 picks. One is Patrick, one of the biggest busts in recent history. The other is Provorov, a #7 overall on D.

 

[Magua]

A preview of things to come!

 

[Beef Invictus]

The Flyers don’t have anywhere close to the personnel to play that way. Hell, the Flyers can barely complete passes. Toronto’s top 5 scorers include two #1 overall picks (Matthews, Tavares), a #4 overall (Marner), a #8 overall (Nylander), a #5 overall on D (Rielly), & then they have Galchenyuk (#3 overall), Thornton (#1 overall), & Spezza (#2 overall) as depth.

The Flyers have two top 10 picks. One is Patrick, one of the biggest busts in recent history. The other is Provorov, a #7 overall on D.

Playing a system that minimizes support between players and maximizes board battling and passing distance does much to make the Flyers look worse at passing than they are.

Systems can influence passing opportunities and thus passing quality. Look at Carolina. They utilize a load of inexact area passes that essentially set up trailing players. Or the Caps in 2018, where they resembled a soccer team in the way they created triangles around 1 or 2 players, isolated them, and moved the puck around them in short passes.

The Flyers had better passing results the prior season when they focused more on possession and puck control. This year of stretch hockey and dump-and-chase is the opposite. Our system isolates our own players. The lack of space we choose as we grind along the boards after waiting for sprinting forwards to get up ice and sit in coverage impacts passing quality. This team simply minimized it's chances to move the puck well and maintain possession while every other successful team maximizes those chances.

 

[deadhead]

I'm not sure it's the system, I doubt AV suddenly changed his system in the bubble or this year.

When players don't have legs, they start to cheat, they're slow getting back (hurting the defense and leaving bigger gaps), they don't skate fluidly through the neutral zone, they can't get to the puck on the dump in, and so on.

Spring of 2020, this team was flying, short shifts with players going 100% on every shift. That's what's needed to make AV's system work on a team with good but not great players, which is why he rolls 4 lines - teams that give the top 2 lines 20+ minutes tend to be top heavy with limited talent on the bottom six. That was the 2017-18 Flyers, which can work if you have the goalie - unfortunately our goalies allowed the other team to match our top line's production.

AV is right on that, on a team that lacks elite offensive talent, the way to even the playing field is to roll four solid lines, back check hard, and both tire the opponent's top two lines and exploit their bottom six.

That's why I'm willing to see what happens this fall, with the young depth on this team they should be able to play an aggressive, up tempo system.

 

[Beef Invictus]

I'm not sure it's the system, I doubt AV suddenly changed his system in the bubble or this year.

When players don't have legs, they start to cheat, they're slow getting back (hurting the defense and leaving bigger gaps), they don't skate fluidly through the neutral zone, they can't get to the puck on the dump in, and so on.

Spring of 2020, this team was flying, short shifts with players going 100% on every shift. That's what's needed to make AV's system work on a team with good but not great players, which is why he rolls 4 lines - teams that give the top 2 lines 20+ minutes tend to be top heavy with limited talent on the bottom six. That was the 2017-18 Flyers, which can work if you have the goalie - unfortunately our goalies allowed the other team to match our top line's production.

AV is right on that, on a team that lacks elite offensive talent, the way to even the playing field is to roll four solid lines, back check hard, and both tire the opponent's top two lines and exploit their bottom six.

That's why I'm willing to see what happens this fall, with the young depth on this team they should be able to play an aggressive, up tempo system.

The systems between last year, the bubble, and this year were drastically different.

Conditioning wasnt a problem, either. There's just no level of conditioning that makes the way AV told them to play work.

 

[landsbergfan]

A preview of things to come!

This is infinitely better than listening to McGuire, Jones, and Millbury. Let's go to [insert recently retired player] and get his [insert sage wisdom of getting pucks deep and getting pucks to the net]

 

[landsbergfan]

Pesce, one of the better defenders in the league, had the 3rd highest offensive WAR this season for defensemen. That’s nuts. Gotta like Staal being the X factor too on this young team. He’s the oldest starting skater at 32! Everyone else is sub-30.

Love
My
Canes

32 year old Staal surrounded by all those kids...you might say he is "Raising Canes"...

Okay, I'll leave

 

[DancingPanther]

A preview of things to come!

I listened to this on lvl 2 volume and heard it loud and clear. At least he proclaimed he wasn't a hockey expert

Someone f***ing kill me

 

[Ghosts Beer]

Playing a system that minimizes support between players and maximizes board battling and passing distance does much to make the Flyers look worse at passing than they are.

Systems can influence passing opportunities and thus passing quality. Look at Carolina. They utilize a load of inexact area passes that essentially set up trailing players. Or the Caps in 2018, where they resembled a soccer team in the way they created triangles around 1 or 2 players, isolated them, and moved the puck around them in short passes.

The Flyers had better passing results the prior season when they focused more on possession and puck control. This year of stretch hockey and dump-and-chase is the opposite. Our system isolates our own players. The lack of space we choose as we grind along the boards after waiting for sprinting forwards to get up ice and sit in coverage impacts passing quality. This team simply minimized it's chances to move the puck well and maintain possession while every other successful team maximizes those chances.

The system was fine last season when they were running on all cylinders & kicking ass from mid-January through mid-March when the Covid halt hit.

AV’s system is demanding. Players need to be in great shape, & it takes a lot of practice & repetition to make the instantaneous reads. Players lost their conditioning due to Covid, & the lack of practice also killed them in relearning the system, & many players resorted to bad habits.

Additionally, most of their missed passes & fumbled pucks had absolutely nothing to do with systems. We’re talking about simple plays that they were unable to execute on a regular basis beginning with the bubble.

 

[BernieParent]

The Flyers don’t have anywhere close to the personnel to play that way. Hell, the Flyers can barely complete passes. Toronto’s top 5 scorers include two #1 overall picks (Matthews, Tavares), a #4 overall (Marner), a #8 overall (Nylander), a #5 overall on D (Rielly), & then they have Galchenyuk (#3 overall), Thornton (#1 overall), & Spezza (#2 overall) as depth.

The Flyers have two top 10 picks. One is Patrick, one of the biggest busts in recent history. The other is Provorov, a #7 overall on D.

Thanks for your reply, GB. I did allude to the high-level talent driving the Leafs play, but that doesn't mean we need to dump on the Flyers' talent. They do indeed have more than two top 10 picks: JvR was a #2, since you are reaching way back for Thornton and Spezza's rankings, Couturier was picked 8th, and Voracek was 7th. That being said, I would argue that the Leafs movement-emphasizing offensive strategy facilitates passing because they are generally quick but short passes to uncovered players. The skaters do need to be able to anticipate where each other will be, but this doesn't require through-the-needle passes by 3-4 defenders. A 7th round pick should have enough skill to see the ice and make a short pass on the move to a teammate, so I am confident that a mid-first like Farabee and even late firsts like Giroux, Sanheim, and Konecny can do so with a high degree of success.

And if we are going to hang the label of bust on Patrick then it should be tattooed in all caps on Galchenyuk, who doesn't have the excuse of a debilitating condition that stole a year's worth of development from him.

 

[Cody Webster]

I listened to this on lvl 2 volume and heard it loud and clear. At least he proclaimed he wasn't a hockey expert

Someone f***ing kill me

Gotta love him comparing the Oilers to the Brooklyn Nets lol

One sport uses 6, maybe 7 guys while the other uses 18...

 

[IronMarshal]

I am not a Stephen A fan, but this is pretty funny

Dude is a caricature of himself, LOL, and it is pretty funny.

 

[DancingPanther]

Gotta love him comparing the Oilers to the Brooklyn Nets lol

One sport uses 6, maybe 7 guys while the other uses 18...

Yup. Took ESPN 25 seconds to bring basketball into a hockey conversation. Shocking

 

[DancingPanther]

I am not a Stephen A fan, but this is pretty funny

Dude is a caricature of himself, LOL, and it is pretty funny.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

Thanks for your reply, GB. I did allude to the high-level talent driving the Leafs play, but that doesn't mean we need to dump on the Flyers' talent. They do indeed have more than two top 10 picks: JvR was a #2, since you are reaching way back for Thornton and Spezza's rankings, Couturier was picked 8th, and Voracek was 7th. That being said, I would argue that the Leafs movement-emphasizing offensive strategy facilitates passing because they are generally quick but short passes to uncovered players. The skaters do need to be able to anticipate where each other will be, but this doesn't require through-the-needle passes by 3-4 defenders. A 7th round pick should have enough skill to see the ice and make a short pass on the move to a teammate, so I am confident that a mid-first like Farabee and even late firsts like Giroux, Sanheim, and Konecny can do so with a high degree of success.

And if we are going to hang the label of bust on Patrick then it should be tattooed in all caps on Galchenyuk, who doesn't have the excuse of a debilitating condition that stole a year's worth of development from him.

You got me on JVR, Couturier, and Voracek, though, still Voracek was 7 and Couturier 8, and JVR's game isn't puck movement, unlike most #2 overall picks. Point being, the Flyers don't have the skill level of the Leafs' top players of Matthews, Tavares, Marner, Rielly, and Nylander.

 

[CanadianFlyer88]

The Leafs have not won a playoff series since 2004.

I honestly would not have guessed that. I knew they had some down years, but didn't realize the playoff futility stretched back 17 years.

Go Habs.

f*** the Leafs.

As a Canadian and avid Leaf hater, it has brought me much joy that this is how the playoffs ended for Toronto the last time they won a series:



It crushes me that they have been gifted a path to the final 4 and, with luck, could have another muffin series in the semis.

 

[CutOnDime97]

Stephen A getting people talking about hockey. I'll take that any day over Millbury and f***ing Mike Babcock.

 

[deadhead]

You got me on JVR, Couturier, and Voracek, though, still Voracek was 7 and Couturier 8, and JVR's game isn't puck movement, unlike most #2 overall picks. Point being, the Flyers don't have the skill level of the Leafs' top players of Matthews, Tavares, Marner, Rielly, and Nylander.

That's why they have to roll four solid lines that back check, that's how you neutralize top talent, getting your forwards back to support your D-men and putting bodies on bodies to make the windows tighter.

I can't think of a handful of games since Spring 2020 when the Flyers put three periods of play together where they skated hard and back checked consistently. Individual periods yes when they looked that good, usually after a leg dead first period.

And it's why I'm willing to move out Voracek, yes he scores, but so does the other team when he's on the ice. He's no longer the skater he was 5-10 years ago and will get slower, he'd be a better fit on a team with established scorers who want to match them with a skilled playmaker. He still has value, but not for this team as a 3rd line forward. He doesn't fit with Hayes, he may not fit with Frost and G and Couts play better with TK.

 

[DancingPanther]

How the mighty have fallen

 

[Striiker]

Somewhere AV was spitting on his TV when Necas sped in to score instead of safely dumping it to the corner

No chance.

Dipshit doesn’t even watch his own team. He’s sure as shit not watching other teams during Martini months.