GDT: PS2 & PS3: Coyotes at Kings, @Staples Center 7:30pm - Kings at Coyotes, @GRA 7pm

[Mosby]

 

[Jakey53]

I would imagine there will be a bunch of players cut today. Looking at the ice time given to most of the vets, I think it is quite obvious the staff knows who will be on the team except for maybe two or three spots.

 

[tuxonpups]

So Keller, Galchenyuk, OEL and Raanta's win at home sounds like fun but how about that spoiler squad in LA? Connauton/Lyubushkin lead the D in PK time, come away -1 each and Lyubushkin mellows out leading the team with just 5 hits and 0 PIM. Hate to break it to you, but 5 minutes into Nash's first broadcast he's gonna be the 'Russian bear.' You know it, I know it and there's not a thing any of us can do to stop it.
Murphy/Osterle lead the D in PP time, come away with 2A and 3A respectively.
Cousins/Richardson/Grabner lead the forwards in time, with the latter two leading in PK minutes. The Roadrunners all-star unit Perlini/Strome/Garland lead in PP time and Perlini gets a goal and an assist, Garland a goal and Strome an assist, while he crushes the dot at 64%.
Sounds like an ugly game, out hit LA 28 to 19 and end up with 14 PIM to their 4 PIM. Kuemper going the full :60 against his old club with a .927 and Crouse winning it with a minute left is quite the troll job, LA must be feelng... old.

 

[SpaceCoyote]

Found this stuff on youtube, little shaky and annoying commentary but for those of you who couldn't go to the game.

 

[The Feckless Puck]

Hayton. Ugh. I’m gonna get flack for saying this, but absolute trash. He floated. He ALWAYS seemed to stop moving his feet. He hardly engaged in board battles. Maybe it was the angle I was sitting at, but he’s slow as **** too. Handles the puck like it was a grenade. Not as bad as Russo did in the first period, but was still pretty bad. Got caught out of position a few times as well.

Chayka was honest with us when he said Hayton's going to be a pretty long-term project. He's an excellent prospect but he's at least a few years away from making any sort of impact at the NHL level. What you're going to see from him right now, at 18, is a kid who still has a lot of junior-hockey habits. So I'm not surprised by your scouting report at all. You can get away with floating, coasting, etc. in junior where guys pot 100+ points every year.

If you can write this same scouting report after Hayton has had a couple of seasons in the AHL in a few years, then we can start throwing the word "bust" around. But for right now, I think the kid ought to be more worried about his senior prom than carrying the weight of an NHL franchise on his shoulders.

I would imagine there will be a bunch of players cut today. Looking at the ice time given to most of the vets, I think it is quite obvious the staff knows who will be on the team except for maybe two or three spots.

I think the only questions the staff have are, who will be the 6th and 7th defenseman, and who will be the healthy scratch in the forward corps. Chayka likes to run with 22 players rather than 23 to give himself flexibility in case of injury, so I think you're right - we're looking at two or three unknowns at most.

 

[Grimes]

A little surprised Golly Goose didn't play in either game. Not injured either. Hmm.

Also 17 minors between the 2 games. Holy hell.

Probably more to evaluate Lybu and Oesterle and to give guys like POJ and Cappo a couple of games before cuts.

 

[moosemeister]

I hope Oesterle plays on Saturday. Have a lot of interest in seeing how he does

 

[moosemeister]

You are talking about a 18 year old in his second game with the big dogs.

He killed 6:40 of penalties, including the 5 on 3 (where he stripped Toffoli) Without a goal against.

He won 50% of faceoffs.

He moved the puck well.

He’s pretty tough -took a pretty good cross check to the neck or face and didn’t miss a shift.

Outside of needing to add a bit of offence, I think he had a really strong night. Mature game.

Kid needs to add a metric f*** ton of offense.

 

[Name Nameless]

On a sidenote, you also getting more and more ads under the ice? Here in Europe, you can't see the puck for all the ugliness under the ice... It seems to sneak itself into the NHL more and more.

 

[BUX7PHX]

Honestly, I think what perturbs people the most about the draft pick this year is simply that it doesn't flow with the direction that we seemed to be headed, in a sense.

If we did not have Tocchet as our coach and still had Tippett, so many people would be saying, well, not the pick I would have gone with, but when you look at how Tip runs his offense, etc. Hayton would kind of be that perfect player in the system. But since Tocchet is our coach and we are looking at speed and up-tempo play, the logical pick at that point would have been Zadina.

In my eyes, that is where a lot of the question marks are stemming from, his production as a 17 year old notwithstanding. I can see how his stats may not be great b/c of who he had in front of him, and many people who are more in touch with the OHL than I am are saying that he kept playing his way into larger roles, as opposed to being the guy who was content with being the guy who was after the Frosts, Katchouks, and other Soo players with more experience. That is something that can be dealt with, b/c just like in the NHL, you have to prove that you belong in those scenarios.

But in terms of the direction the team was going in, Hayton would not have been considered the pick based off of the up-tempo style, and that is probably what has people in a little bit more of a quandary on the pick.

 

[The Feckless Puck]

I can understand that - but I also think it's easier to get a solid two-way player with good full-game instincts to boost his offense a bit than it is to get a naturally gifted one-dimensional player to play a more well-rounded game (at least without hampering the game that got him where he is in the first place). At any rate, that seems to be Chayka's philosophy with Hayton. Whether it works out that way or not is a matter of time and development.

 

[Plub]

It's the opposite. Offense generally can't be taught. Defense, anyone can learn.

 

[The Feckless Puck]

It's the opposite. Offense generally can't be taught. Defense, anyone can learn.

You can't necessarily give someone who doesn't have offensive skills what he needs through coaching. But someone who does have those skills can be taught to utilize them better without costing him his ability to be responsible defensively. On the other hand, if you ask a player who is dependent on his offensive gifts to flourish to curtail those gifts in the service of defensive responsibility, you can knock him off his game - many times, because you're asking him to think the game that he has always approached instinctually.

 

[Summer Rose]

You can't necessarily give someone who doesn't have offensive skills what he needs through coaching. But someone who does have those skills can be taught to utilize them better without costing him his ability to be responsible defensively. On the other hand, if you ask a player who is dependent on his offensive gifts to flourish to curtail those gifts in the service of defensive responsibility, you can knock him off his game - many times, because you're asking him to think the game that he has always approached instinctually.

 

[BUX7PHX]

It's the opposite. Offense generally can't be taught. Defense, anyone can learn.

That comes with two caveats.

First of all, offense is rarely a byproduct of one single player, but rather the way the puck (or ball) is moved around to create looks. A good question to illustrate this would be would you rather be the coach of the best 3 point shooting team in the NBA, or the best 2 point FG shooting team in the NBA? For me, it is always the latter, b/c while good 3 point shooting is nice, you know that you are taking high-risk, high-reward type shots b/c you struggle to move the ball well enough to get good looks inside. Whereas being a coach on a team with good 2 point FG percentage means that you are probably getting a lot of points close in and moving people around so that you have a mix of very high quality shots within a certain radius of the rim. Similarly, while players like Crosby, Matthews or McDavid have offensive skill, their skills drive some play, but they are also not the sole person behind the creation of offense either - it is how your team spreads the defense around and gets into situations where the defense gets out of position and you can force odd-man situations in limited space (think how many times last year we would get 4 players on one side of the ice and out of position, so that the team would be open to 2 on 1 situations.

The second caveat is that while anyone can learn defense, if you don't maintain good defensive play, you won't make it at the highest level. Same way I can teach someone how to change their car's oil, throw a football, or any other item that can be taught, if the person being taught does not maintain what was taught, then it won't matter what happens.

It's no surprise why the teams who typically finish at the top get stellar defensive play. Washington was average in GAA during the regular season (2.90 GAA per game). That improved to 2.54 GAA in the playoffs. Vegas was at 2.74 GAA per game in the regular season and improved to 2.35 GAA in playoffs. Vegas actually reduced their GF in the playoffs vs regular season (3.27 GFA in regular season vs. 2.85 GFA in playoffs).

Columbus, Boston, Washington, and Pittsburgh were the only teams who increased their offensive output per game vs the regular season (SJ was flat 3.1 regular season vs 3.00 in playoffs). On average those 5 teams (SJ included) averaged 12.8 games played in the playoffs, total.

Teams that decreased their GAA from regular season: Washington, Pittsburgh, Winnipeg, San Jose, Tampa Bay, Vegas, and LA. For the 7 teams that decreased their GAA from regular season to playoffs, they averaged playing in 14.9 games played in the playoffs, total.

If you are going to survive the playoffs, defense is more important than offense....

 

[Coyotedroppings]

Easy to see why they fell in love with Hayton. It's rare to find anyone, let alone anyone so young that anticipates the play and goes where he needs to be, with no hesitation. If his skill set continues to improve to an NHL level I think all will be quite pleased with this decision.