News Article: Senators’ Rebuild is Heading in the Wrong Direction

[SENSational]

Two weeks ago the same guy wrote an article with the following concluding paragraph...



https://thehockeywriters.com/senators-2020-21-prospect-timelines/

What changed between August 18th and today, buddy?

Just throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks.

Bad article all around, and I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Dorion. Probably would have never been written if Boucher wasn't drafted...which is funny because anyone trying to project any player from this year's draft will most likely end up looking like an idiot.

 

[Tuna99]

“Cole Caulfield; Victor Arvidsson and Cam Atkinson are stars in their own right”

they are - wow, I need to watch more star hockey.

joke

 

[JD1]

The author comes from the travis yost school of journalism....start with a conclusion....build your facts from there

 

[Synthetek]

Anyone know how tall the writer of this article is? I think he doesn't like tall people.

 

[BondraTime]

That’s what happens when anyone is allowed to post an opinion as an article, with or without knowledge.

 

[bashbros32]

An Average of 2 forwards per team across the final 8 teams in the playoffs this year were under 6'.

Here are those 16 players:

Colorado: Tyson Jost (10th overall)
Boston: Brad Marchand (3rd round)
Carolina: Teuvu Teravainen (18th overall)
Winnipeg: Matthieu Perreault (6th round)
Vegas: Jonathan Marchessault (Undrafted)
New York Islanders: Jean-Gabriel Pageau (4th round)
Cal Clutterbuck (3rd round)
Leo Komarov (6th round)
Anthony Beauvillier (28th overall)
Montreal: Brendan Gallagher (5th round)
Cole Caufield (15th overall)
Nick Suzuki (13th overall)
Tampa Bay: Nikita Kucherov (2nd round)
Brayden Point (3rd round)
Ondrej Palat (7th round)

seems like a pretty mixed bag to me, bunch a top forwards, a couple that seem like busts, a couple stars. Majority of the high-skill flashy players were drafted top 20 aside from Kucherov and Point.

 

[Sweatred]

Just another example of the media trying to take cheap shots at the Senators - everything Toronto does is right, everything Ottawa does is wrong …

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

meh

It's a lot easier to put the reigns on a kid and tone him down a bit and point him in the right direction, then to constantly light a fire under a kid who has no self-motivation. If our kids want to play in the NHL and be successful as we think they do, then they'll be smart enough to listen to the coaches and work on being disciplined. And the PIMs won't matter.

That said...yesh, we could also use a lot more skill. So can a good 25+ other NHL teams.

 

[Back in Black]

I didn't read it, and I'm not even mad!

 

[SENATOR]

The article is not deep enough. Sens draft size, because they do a budget drafting. They draft second-third rounders in the first to cut the future costs for contracts. It is not a rebuild. It is being in a survival mode. Only little ponies with pink glasses on - Sens fan base, do not want to see it until they will lose a team. In Montreal the fan base would annihilate such ridiculous practices. At lease this article makes some correct statements. The way Ottawa drafts, they do not even draft to make playoffs. To be honest it is really disgusting to even look at this idiotic and bankrupt ownership. We will destroy the future of this franchise drafting like sh*t. because we can, after us - only scorched earth.
Why Dorion is still not the most hated person in Ottawa?

 

[Xspyrit]

Based on the comments here, not sure it's worth reading but right away in the first paragraph, despite it being a positive introduction :

"It’s been a long rebuild in which the team has seen their fair share of terrible finishes"

It's actually a pretty fast rebuild... Well, of course it depends what happens in the next few years but we "only" had 3 of these "terrible finishes". Last year, we'd probably would have made the playoffs if it wasn't for the shortened season or if we were just a bit more "prepared" for the season (hard circumstances though)

Long rebuilds are like the Oilers (had no playoffs for 10 straight years at some point), Sabres (no playoffs for 10 straight years), Panthers (no playoffs round win for 25 years, no playoffs for 10 straight years then missed 6/7), Toronto (no playoffs round win for 17 years, missed 10 of last 11 seasons prior to 2017), Blackhawks (missed 9 of last 10 seasons prior success), Kings (had 1 playoffs round win in the 17 years prior to their 2012 Cup), Devils (missed 8 of last 9 seasons and more?) ETC

So why are the Senators most likely in a "fast rebuild"?

Most of the time, teams rebuild when they have no other choice and their stars/key players are aging and declining and thus impacting the team's performance negatively (see the actual Sharks)

Ottawa didn't wait for that to happen and instead of investing in the core to properly surround them, they traded their star players in their prime and got prime assets out of it. Just Erik Karlsson returned Tim Stutzle, Josh Norris, Mads Sogaard, Leevi Merilainen and Zack Ostapchuk (and they even had Rudolfs Balcers before giving him away)

Conclusion : already such a long rebuttal from his first point so I can only imagine how messed up this article is

I haven't read but I imagien all it does is actually make you more optimistic about this rebuild. We just need Melnyk to invest a lot of money and management to not sabotage anything

 

[LatteLarrys]

Sens draft size, because they do a budget drafting. They draft second-third rounders in the first to cut the future costs for contracts. It is not a rebuild. It is being in a survival mode. Only little ponies with pink glasses on - Sens fan base, do not want to see it until they will lose a team. In Montreal the fan base would annihilate such ridiculous practices.

Why Dorion is still not the most hated person in Ottawa?

Draft 2018 says hi

 

[Xspyrit]

Size/strenght/agility/quickness/fitness etc is obviously important in sports because you are using your body to perform. But there's no RIGID rules as to why you'll be successful or not. Dedication and desire is just as important. That's why you see "smaller" athletes with less physical gifts succeed.

Looking at Sens drafting with just measurements and PIMs is incredibly stupid. Look at a guy like Formenton for example. Is there a team that wouldn't want a prospect like that? At 6'2 198 lbs, is he too tall? too big? Would it be better if he was smaller? What's the point here? He wouldn't be a better skater or better hockey player if he was 5'11...

So curiosity got the best of me as usual and I tried to look for his conclusion... he says "So, in order to build a Cup champion, teams seem to need to balance their lineup. They need strength and grit from their depth lines. but also high-end speed and skill on their top lines"

Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Josh Norris, Shane Pinto, Brady Tkachuk, Alex Formenton and some of Ridly Greig, Egor Sokolov, Roby Jarventie, Zack Ostapchuk, Tyler Boucher, Logan Brown, etc

Where's the lack of speed and skill? Let's say Stutzle ends up as a center and Sokolov and Jarventie boom :

Jarventie-Stutzle-Batherson
Tkachuk-Norris-Sokolov
Greig-Pinto-Formenton

I mean, that's possibly a nightmarish top-9 to play against, in terms of speed and skill too. People are starting to understand what we have with Stutzle, Batherson, Tkachuk and Norris. Now imagine Sokolov and Jarventie shooting ability added to that top-6, plus their combination of size and skill. We have already seen what they can do at the pro level, it's still very early for Jarventie and Sokolov just need to continue improving his skating and pace. If he becomes just a bit quicker, watch out.

On defense, Chabot, Sanderson and Bernard-Docker are pretty fast and skilled for D-men and will be 50% of the squad. I could add Brannstrom in there but he most likely won't be in Ottawa long term.

Two weeks ago the same guy wrote an article with the following concluding paragraph...



https://thehockeywriters.com/senators-2020-21-prospect-timelines/

What changed between August 18th and today, buddy?

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

I think the writer was trying to say “A real cup team includes Marner, Tavares, and Matthews”

 

[milkbag]

The article is not deep enough. Sens draft size, because they do a budget drafting. They draft second-third rounders in the first to cut the future costs for contracts. It is not a rebuild. It is being in a survival mode. Only little ponies with pink glasses on - Sens fan base, do not want to see it until they will lose a team. In Montreal the fan base would annihilate such ridiculous practices. At lease this article makes some correct statements. The way Ottawa drafts, they do not even draft to make playoffs. To be honest it is really disgusting to even look at this idiotic and bankrupt ownership. We will destroy the future of this franchise drafting like sh*t. because we can, after us - only scorched earth.
Why Dorion is still not the most hated person in Ottawa?

I get you're a Russian national and all and may not understand the idioms but it's "rose-tinted glasses", not just "pink glasses". Just a headsup.

You seem to be particularly irate lately though, maybe switching focus to your cities local KHL team would bring down that blood pressure a bit.

 

[Alf Silfversson]

My goodness that's bad.

Constant contradictions. Very little cohesiveness.

And the premise is awful.

The only pick they've made that you could even SOMEWHAT competently argue was a grit over skill is the Boucher pick. There does seem to be a bit of a preference to a certain type of player but it's not like they picked goons in the 1st two rounds every year.

Jarventie was picked for his PIMs? LOL.

We don't like short players but picked Greig inthe 1st round?

I like to really like some of our picks (Stützle, Sanderson, Greig, Jarventie) and don't like some others (Kleven, Boucher) but to say that we are bypassing skill is crazy.

This person is not even a 1st year university level writer. It's embarrassing.

 

[L'Aveuglette]

 

[Cosmix]

Just throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks.

Bad article all around, and I'm not exactly the biggest fan of Dorion. Probably would have never been written if Boucher wasn't drafted...which is funny because anyone trying to project any player from this year's draft will most likely end up looking like an idiot.

That's far too harsh a last sentence. Power looks to be a pretty safe bet for a top 4 D man.

 

[aragorn]

The Sens like most teams place a heavy emphasis on character, guys you can depend on & who have a strong work ethic. Those that also have skill are in high demand in the NHL & Ottawa is building this team through the draft with those kinds of players, the right way. Everybody will have an opinion about this guy or that guy, but what's important in the end is that they are building a playoff team that will one day challenge for a SC, the rest is just semantics.

 

[Hale The Villain]

There being only 7 players 5ft9 and under considered of star quality drafted since 2006 is more an example AGAINST the writer's position than anything.

What an idiot.

Well that depends on what you consider star quality, but I think it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of forward steals outside of the top 2 rounds are small guys.

In fact, there have only been a handful top 6 quality forwards selected in the late rounds in the past 15 years that are big (say 6'2 or taller), and we've drafted two of them:

Stone
Benn
Killorn
Batherson
Kubalik
Buchnevich
Anderson
Lee

While the vast majority of top 6 quality forwards drafted since the lockout have been smaller than 6'0:

Jake Guentzel
Joe Pavelski
Kirill Kaprizov
Johnny Gaudreau
Ondrej Palat
Oliver Bjorkstrand
Jonathan Marchessault
Vinny Trocheck
Bryan Rust
Conor Garland
Mike Hoffman
Connor Brown
Cam Atkinson
Patric Hornqvist
Anthony Duclair
Andrew Mangiapane
Jesper Bratt
Kevin Lebanc
JG Pageau
Viktor Arvidsson
Evgeny Dadonov
Gustav Nyquist
Brendan Gallagher
Blake Coleman
Viktor Olofsson

History shows that once you get into the rounds where it becomes more of a crap shoot and questionable to expect an NHLer, it's not a bad idea to gamble on skill and IQ when it comes to the forwards available.

 

[Micklebot]

Well that depends on what you consider star quality, but I think it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of forward steals outside of the top 2 rounds are small guys.

In fact, there have only been a handful top 6 quality forwards selected in the late rounds in the past 15 years that are big (say 6'2 or taller), and we've drafted two of them:

Stone
Benn
Killorn
Batherson
Kubalik
Buchnevich
Anderson
Lee

While the vast majority of top 6 quality forwards drafted since the lockout have been smaller than 6'0:

Jake Guentzel
Joe Pavelski
Kirill Kaprizov
Johnny Gaudreau
Ondrej Palat
Oliver Bjorkstrand
Jonathan Marchessault
Vinny Trocheck
Bryan Rust
Conor Garland
Mike Hoffman
Connor Brown
Cam Atkinson
Patric Hornqvist
Anthony Duclair
Andrew Mangiapane
Jesper Bratt
Kevin Lebanc
JG Pageau
Viktor Arvidsson
Evgeny Dadonov
Gustav Nyquist
Brendan Gallagher
Blake Coleman
Viktor Olofsson

History shows that once you get into the rounds where it becomes more of a crap shoot and questionable to expect an NHLer, it's not a bad idea to gamble on skill and IQ when it comes to the forwards available.

Pretty sure Hoffman is listed at 6 foot even, might have been under 6 foot at the time he was drafted though.

 

[aragorn]

I guess it comes down to preference on whether you think this team is headed in the wrong direction or not. If the end of last season is any indication where they were playing quite well IMO that would indicate to me that they are heading in the right direction. Norris was 2nd for rookie of the yr, Batherson lead the AHL in scoring in his last yr there & looked great last yr. Tkachuk led the NHL in several categories & in every game I watched they could not stop talking about him & how good he will be as he matures.

Chabot has Norris potential IMO, Zub was great in his debut, Sanderson looks like he is going to be a stud & most here see Stutzle as an elite player. Paul & C. Brown had a great yr last yr & culminated that with a gold medal at the worlds. Pinto looked great is his NHL debut, Formenton could be the fastest guy in the league, Sokolov had a great rookie season in Belleville, Greig looks good as does Jarventie & Kleven. Where exactly have the Sens gone in the wrong direction when so many of their young players seem to be doing quite well?

 

[swiftwin]

Two weeks ago the same guy wrote an article with the following concluding paragraph...



https://thehockeywriters.com/senators-2020-21-prospect-timelines/

What changed between August 18th and today, buddy?

Wanting more clicks.

This is the most pathetic attempt at click bait I've ever seen. That site should be ashamed of themsevles.

 

[Hale The Villain]

Pretty sure Hoffman is listed at 6 foot even, might have been under 6 foot at the time he was drafted though.

For most players listed there I was using their current height, but I'm pretty sure in Hoffman's case he was below 6'0 at the time he was drafted.

Could be a few more guys I missed who were well under 6'0 at the time they were drafted but grew post-draft.

 

[Tuna99]

Weren’t St Louis and Boston the 2 most penalized teams in the NHL when they won their Cups?