RD Sergey Zborovskiy - Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, KHL (2015, 79th, NYR; released)

GeorgeKaplan

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Dec 19, 2011
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There's literally a lot of evidence of this. He was drafted in June of 2015, Gorton took over the organization in July of 2015. Ever since Gorton took over, positional defenders who play a defensive style have been pushed out of the organization or been treated very differently than other styles of defensemen. We know all about what Gorton wants.

He bought out one of the organizations best ever defensemen because he didn't play the right style and used that free cap space to sign Brendan Smith to a big contract who has shown no evidence of being better than a marginal hockey player. But the corsi stats are good and he sucks at putting up points, so they call that a defensive defenseman. Sent him to the AHL a number of months later for failing to play like an NHL player. The player he bought out played better this season than almost his whole defense.

And then we see in some of the recent trades. Cal Foote was pretty unanimously regarded as Tampa's best defensive prospect by most of the scouting industry, but we've been told for months the Rangers didn't care and instead wanted Hajek. Why? I suspect it comes down to Foote's somewhat iffy skating. Thats not really part of Hajek's scouting report. They had all these spots available for defensemen late in the season, but gave no chance to Graves, instead trading him away for a player they kept in the minors. Gilmour, Sproul, DeAngelo, Pionk, O'Gara all played, some of them very badly. The guy who was good for two years in the AHL and showed decent upside was traded because he wasn't the most agile in his pivots.

They signed Bereglazov who was a pretty good defensive defensemen the year prior in the second best league in the world. They gave him no chance. Actually, they gave him less of a shot than some guys who played in the minors all season. He didn't even get two preseason games, which almost all the minor league players got. The shills have told us he just wasn't suited for the new NHL, even though they've likely never seen him play, and we just went through the team's worst defensive season of the current era. The Rangers with their preferences on defense are all about skating and puck moving. They'll fill in the needed info from there. If you don't have skill, they'll call you a defensive defenseman. If you do, you are an offensive defenseman. This organization has totally went radical when it comes to how they regard defenseman, and its showing in the results.

But I get it, a lot of you refuse to criticize Gorton, at all. He's the messiah, even though our defense still sucks, and he's made a lot of questionable decisions, especially on the back-end.
I’m really busy at work to respond to all of this, and we’ve gone through this all before, so I’m just going to say I’ll agree to disagree with like 95% of this
 

QJL

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Jan 2, 2014
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I’m really busy at work to respond to all of this, and we’ve gone through this all before, so I’m just going to say I’ll agree to disagree with like 95% of this

Agreed. I appreciate the perspective but players like Girardi, Bereglazov, and Zobo are anchors. I’ll admit we don’t have defensive-minded stalwarts right now but the players we’ve pushed out were not the answer.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

Drury and Laviolette Must Go
Dec 8, 2013
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Agreed. I appreciate the perspective but players like Girardi, Bereglazov, and Zobo are anchors. I’ll admit we don’t have defensive-minded stalwarts right now but the players we’ve pushed out were not the answer.

Except Girardi was the answer for a better team than ours. But how were Brendan Smith's corsi stats this season? Thats what really matters, not that he was an NHL veteran sent to the minors.

The other weren't given a chance in our organization, but this is what some of you do. Don't watch them play, and then attach the typical buzz words, anchor, plug, pylon, etc due to an assumption. Who is the answer with defensive minded stalwarts? We've gotten rid of almost every positionally sound defensive minded player from the organization. Is the answer to have a team that doesn't play any defense and try to explain that away by repeating 2-3 talking points about "the new NHL"? Because other teams have better defensive players than we do. This is our problem. Other teams don't have these defensive issues.
 

QJL

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Jan 2, 2014
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Except Girardi was the answer for a better team than ours. But how were Brendan Smith's corsi stats this season? Thats what really matters, not that he was an NHL veteran sent to the minors.

The other two weren't given a chance, but this is what some of you do. Don't watch them play, and then attach the typical buzz words, anchor, plug, pylon, etc due to an assumption. Who is the answer with defensive minded stalwarts? We've gotten rid of almost every positionally sound defensive minded player from the organization. Is the answer to have a team that doesn't play any defense?

The problem was G, Zobo, and Bear can’t skate at an NHL pace. I think the belief was that we need strong skaters who are defensively minded. Lindgren and Hajek fit that mold.

The riddance of the defensive forward core has been troubling. Stepan, Nash, Callahan, Hagelin, Grabner has not been a trend I’ve enjoyed. Fast and Hayes (emerged this year) might be the only forwards I feel very comfortable with in our own zone right now.
 
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bigdog16

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Nov 7, 2013
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Had a breakout year after being traded to Torpedo Nizhniy Novgorod last summer and signed a new 2 year contract with them.

He posted 5 points in 41 games after he scored 5 points in 37 games the year before. How is that a breakout year
 

Caser

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May 21, 2013
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He posted 5 points in 41 games after he scored 5 points in 37 games the year before. How is that a breakout year

He has been playing at the second pairing for Torpedo in the second half of the season, it is a breakout comparing to his previous struggles. Additionally, his contract extension is actually a matched offersheet, as apparently CSKA were willing to get him too after his solid performance. As for the points, his current role is more of a shutdown guy, points aren't always reflecting the performance of this kind of players.

Edit: and those "5 points in 37 games the year before" were in the KHL+VHL combined.
 
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Pavel Buchnevich

Drury and Laviolette Must Go
Dec 8, 2013
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New York
He didn't even struggle with the Rangers. He didn't fit Gorton's philosophy for defensemen. He barely got into any games when he was in the Rangers organization. They were playing some pretty bad players ahead of him, and sending him to the ECHL. Now he's a good KHL defenseman two years later, so he likely would've at least been a good AHL defenseman.

I don't know why you'd draft a player that you philosophically don't want in your organization, but it's more fodder for the idea that the GM doesn't control every pick in a draft. Gorton got rid of every big defenseman in the organization that wasn't a very good skater. The only one he kept along was Staal, who I'm sure he would've gotten rid of, if he could.

We've already seen what happened with Graves. I don't know if this guy will be anywhere near as good and he probably won't be, but he probably could've been useful, and maybe gotten into some NHL games by this point. The good thing is that Gorton's done a little better recently with defensemen as DeAngelo, Fox and Lindgren have all come good, and Lundkvist looks promising. He does tend to struggle though with evaluating bigger defenseman. He completely whiffed on his assessment of Hajek. Probably the worst assessment he's made as GM. The Trouba trade isn't looking great. The Graves trade looks pretty terrible. The initial Skjei contract wasn't a good idea. The Smith contract was awful.

The way I see it is that Gorton wants these super-athletes, but a lot of them are lacking in the hockey department. A guy like Graves didn't skate as swiftly as Gorton wanted, but his hockey skills were always pretty good. Zborovskiy was a player who defended well, and moved the puck well enough. He was probably an average skater, so that wasn't going to see him stick in an organization Gorton runs.
 

Amazing Kreiderman

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Apr 11, 2011
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He has been playing at the second pairing for Torpedo in the second half of the season, it is a breakout comparing to his previous struggles. Additionally, his contract extension is actually a matched offersheet, as apparently CSKA were willing to get him too after his solid performance. As for the points, his current role is more of a shutdown guy, points aren't always reflecting the performance of this kind of players.

Edit: and those "5 points in 37 games the year before" were in the KHL+VHL combined.

Bingo. This is what happens when people just do a quick search on Eliteprospects.com and form an opinion that way :laugh:
 

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