Player Discussion: Niku

[KingBogo]

I agree with the bold. But that doesn't mean there haven't been exceptions to that.

That would be true for every team in the league, but they haven't let a prospect slip through their fingers yet that proved themselves elsewhere.

 

[Buffdog]

Not that this has anything to do with niku in particular (although there have been some completely unsubstantiated rumours about off ice attitude, etc)...

Mark Messier is a guest on one of my favorite podcasts (Peter Attia's The Drive - mostly a science/health/longevity show). Anyway, he was telling the story of a road trip the Oilers had his first year in Edmonton. There were two airports at the time - a municipal one and and the international one. For whatever reason, he accidentally went to the municipal one by mistake. He panicked and called the oilers office and they told him not to worry. He'd miss the flight to Detroit but there would be a ticket waiting for him at the air Canada counter once he got there.

When he got there there was a ticket, but it was to Houston- they sent him to the minors for two weeks for missing a flight. He talked about how it was driven home to him that it's all about team and there's no place for individual self interest. He went on to become one of the most prominent leaders in nhl history (the only player to captain two organizations to Stanley cups).

In other words, who knows why niku instill in the A, but somebody somewhere has a reason.

 

[Bob E]

Mo likes defensive-minded, physical dmen in his bottom pair. Niku isn’t that.

Now IF Morrissey or Pionk go down (cue wood knocking), I think Niku is up ASAP.

 

[ffh]

Mo likes defensive-minded, physical dmen in his bottom pair. Niku isn’t that.

Now IF Morrissey or Pionk go down (cue wood knocking), I think Niku is up ASAP.

this has nothing to do with it. do you think a player who isn't trusted to play on the 3rd pair or any pairing will get top pairing minutes. mo like most coaches will play who he thinks will give him the best chance to win.

 

[Upperdeckjet]

this has nothing to do with it. do you think a player who isn't trusted to play on the 3rd pair or any pairing will get top pairing minutes. mo like most coaches will play who he thinks will give him the best chance to win.

I have to agree with Bob E on this one. I think Morrissey or Pionk going down is exactly the opportunity to play Niku in the position he is being groomed for. Let's face it, there would be no one better on our current roster to slide into the top pairing slot anyway.

If your point was that Mo just doesn't like him and won't play him there, well that's another thing.

 

[Psych0dad]

this has nothing to do with it. do you think a player who isn't trusted to play on the 3rd pair or any pairing will get top pairing minutes. mo like most coaches will play who he thinks will give him the best chance to win.

And as we have seen so many times in the past, Mo and his feels are amazingly wrong like all the time. And he can sabotage the team by being stubborn to his wrong assumptions, like 26&55 and 29&18. Years man....YEARS. How many wins did they leave on the table? Wonder if they left a cup there too. Because PoMo had a feeling that something works (didn't) and kept doing what he did.

He is a moron, and rarely does what actually gives him the best chance to win. Suggesting that we should be going with his brainfarts, kinda ignores the last few years of him running the team to the ground by using the roster wrong. And now we should just accept that he knows what he does with Niku?

I don't think I'd trust him to tie his shoelaces at this point. Too much chance of it going horribly wrong and he'd just keep doing the same mistake over and over again because that's how he rolls.

Yeah he is wrong about Niku, just like he is wrong about almost all player evaluations and combinations. Also has the track record to prove it.

 

[KingBogo]

I have to agree with Bob E on this one. I think Morrissey or Pionk going down is exactly the opportunity to play Niku in the position he is being groomed for. Let's face it, there would be no one better on our current roster to slide into the top pairing slot anyway.

If your point was that Mo just doesn't like him and won't play him there, well that's another thing.

I don't think they plug Niku into the top 4 quite yet unless it was with Morrissey. At this point they probably would only make that jump with someone capable of sheltering him in his own end.

 

[Upperdeckjet]

I don't think they plug Niku into the top 4 quite yet unless it was with Morrissey. At this point they probably would only make that jump with someone capable of sheltering him in his own end.

I think we need to learn what we have in this guy and we need to know pretty quick.

I do not believe we ice a defense next year with four guys the size of Pionk, Morrissey, Heinola (maybe he grows) and Niku. Decisions will have to be made.

 

[ffh]

I think we need to learn what we have in this guy and we need to know pretty quick.

I do not believe we ice a defense next year with four guys the size of Pionk, Morrissey, Heinola (maybe he grows) and Niku. Decisions will have to be made.

You are right we will never ice 4 dmen 6' and under when you look at what teams look like that make deep playoff runs and big heavy teams in our division st Louis Nashville dallas. We have all next year with him so I dont see us rushing him up this year or moving him. He is a trending to be a postma type in terms of usage.

 

[Bob E]

this has nothing to do with it. do you think a player who isn't trusted to play on the 3rd pair or any pairing will get top pairing minutes. mo like most coaches will play who he thinks will give him the best chance to win.

It’s not a trust issue, it’s a role issue. Niku won’t be a pk’er for Mo, as his bottom pair usually does. He won’t slot in the pp ahead of Morrissey or Pionk either. So Mo will slot physical pk’ing Bitetto in, when physical pk’ing Beaulieu goes down. Dahlstron for Kulikov.

A Niku - Morrissey or Niku - Pionk pairing is very unlikely unless there are many more injuries. Mo is old school and predictable.

Now if an offensive-minded dman goes down, Niku is the call-up. That’s my prediction.

edit: to answer your question about top pairing minutes, no, Niku won’t play against the other team’s best. Never said he would. But he’ll be called up to play pp and offer an offensive element, likely in a 2nd or 3rd pairing role. And play ahead of a guy like Dahlstrom if given the option.

 

[surixon]

Isn't Niku injured atm anyhow?

But I agree with Bob, its all about roles for Moe. He likes having certain player types for certain roles. I don't really agree with his methodology but the team is performing well at the moment so it seems to be working.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

That would be true for every team in the league, but they haven't let a prospect slip through their fingers yet that proved themselves elsewhere.

Until after they had ruined him. Can you prove that is NOT the way it happens? Of course you can't. If things had been done differently results might have been different, or not. We can't go back and do it over to find out.

 

[Rheged]

Top-4 opening for Niku with Kulikov out long term?

 

[Weezeric]

Until after they had ruined him. Can you prove that is NOT the way it happens? Of course you can't. If things had been done differently results might have been different, or not. We can't go back and do it over to find out.

I’m sure if someone said the reverse, that Maurice is responsible for the 3 30 goal scorers <22 years old with his fantastic development plan, you would say that’s silly and it was the talented players that anyone could’ve helped succeed.

You can only look at the final results to determine success. The Jets have developed some of the best young players in the league and none of the players they’ve deemed to be unworthy of bigger roles have gone on to have success elsewhere. Those are the facts.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

I’m sure if someone said the reverse, that Maurice is responsible for the 3 30 goal scorers <22 years old with his fantastic development plan, you would say that’s silly and it was the talented players that anyone could’ve helped succeed.

You can only look at the final results to determine success. The Jets have developed some of the best young players in the league and none of the players they’ve deemed to be unworthy of bigger roles have gone on to have success elsewhere. Those are the facts.

Follow the thread. I already agreed that the organization - which includes Maurice - has done a very good job developing prospects. But that doesn't mean they have been 100% successful. It doesn't mean there are zero failures in their record.

The Jets successes have succeeded. Their failures have failed. Those are also the facts.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

Not that this has anything to do with niku in particular (although there have been some completely unsubstantiated rumours about off ice attitude, etc)...

Mark Messier is a guest on one of my favorite podcasts (Peter Attia's The Drive - mostly a science/health/longevity show). Anyway, he was telling the story of a road trip the Oilers had his first year in Edmonton. There were two airports at the time - a municipal one and and the international one. For whatever reason, he accidentally went to the municipal one by mistake. He panicked and called the oilers office and they told him not to worry. He'd miss the flight to Detroit but there would be a ticket waiting for him at the air Canada counter once he got there.

When he got there there was a ticket, but it was to Houston- they sent him to the minors for two weeks for missing a flight. He talked about how it was driven home to him that it's all about team and there's no place for individual self interest. He went on to become one of the most prominent leaders in nhl history (the only player to captain two organizations to Stanley cups).

In other words, who knows why niku instill in the A, but somebody somewhere has a reason.

Yes of course someone, somewhere has a reason. There is a reason for everything. Is it a good reason?

 

[ffh]

Follow the thread. I already agreed that the organization - which includes Maurice - has done a very good job developing prospects. But that doesn't mean they have been 100% successful. It doesn't mean there are zero failures in their record.

The Jets successes have succeeded. Their failures have failed. Those are also the facts.

Who has failed here and made it elsewhere. Most picks dont make the nhl so not getting a spot on the team is not a failure. But making it somewhere else is. Any names that made it after we gave up on them.

 

[KingBogo]

Until after they had ruined him. Can you prove that is NOT the way it happens? Of course you can't. If things had been done differently results might have been different, or not. We can't go back and do it over to find out.

I don't really buy into the ruined prospect theory except when a player is thrown in way over their head and they are left there until the point the have lost all confidence and have become very tentative. A player not being able to push others aside to claim a role doesn't fit in the ruined category but rather the never made it category.

 

[lomiller1]

I don't think they plug Niku into the top 4 quite yet unless it was with Morrissey. At this point they probably would only make that jump with someone capable of sheltering him in his own end.

The point is that if a young skilled like Niku doesn’t fit in the top 4 PM won’t use him at all. This type of player needs to not only be in the top 4 but be driving their pairing. There is no intermediate stop where they get to play a sheltered role or get regular min on the bottom pair. If they can’t jump directly into that top pair spot he’ll never play them, and even if they could jump into that spot he will only play them there if his hand is forced.

 

[Buffdog]

Yes of course someone, somewhere has a reason. There is a reason for everything. Is it a good reason?

That person thinks so... and they may have more and/different information than we do.

Too bad we didn't have reporter types that asked chevy questions and then drilled down on his answers and didn't let him get away with saying nothing via verbal diarrhea

 

[Positive]

Who has failed here and made it elsewhere. Most picks dont make the nhl so not getting a spot on the team is not a failure. But making it somewhere else is. Any names that made it after we gave up on them.

I predict the response will be 'of course they didn't succeed after they left because they were ruined'. Detractors choose to believe that the successful forwards succeeded despite Jets' coaching and management...while the failures failed because of it. They're not going to budge. Haters gonna hate.

 

[lomiller1]

I predict the response will be 'of course they didn't succeed after they left because they were ruined'. Detractors choose to believe that the successful forwards succeeded despite Jets' coaching and management...while the failures failed because of it.

Leaving a player to stagnate for two or three years because they are too good for the AHL but the coach won’t play them in the NHL pretty much ensures they will end up in Europe. This is a fate that easily could have befallen Morrissey if Trouba had not held out or Connor had Perreault not been injured forcing the Jets to recall him from the AHL.

 

[tbcwpg]

Leaving a player to stagnate for two or three years because they are too good for the AHL but the coach won’t play them in the NHL pretty much ensures they will end up in Europe. This is a fate that easily could have befallen Morrissey if Trouba had not held out or Connor had Perreault not been injured forcing the Jets to recall him from the AHL.

Those examples are doubtful. Those two had way too much talent to be in the AHL long term. Niku isn't as talented as those guys are.

 

[Positive]

Leaving a player to stagnate for two or three years because they are too good for the AHL but the coach won’t play them in the NHL pretty much ensures they will end up in Europe. This is a fate that easily could have befallen Morrissey if Trouba had not held out or Connor had Perreault not been injured forcing the Jets to recall him from the AHL.

The former hasn't happened yet, and the latter never happened so we can't really say. If these are the cornerstones of your argument, it's not very solid.

Slippery-slope argument + revisionist history.

 

[sipowicz]

Top-4 opening for Niku with Kulikov out long term?

Here we go putting the cart before the horse again, guy can't get onto the Jets roster as a #7 or #8 D man and some of you already have him pencilled in for the Norris this season!

Niku only got into the NHL for games last season because Poolman was pretty much injured all season and he would have been the first call up!