GDT: #45 | Flyers at Blue Jackets | Tuesday, January 14, 2025 | 7:00 PM | NBCSP+, 93.3 FM

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Good analysis for Gauthier. The player has to have more than a shot. He has been a Large Boy playing with children up to this point in his career. Now we'll see if he has the stomach to up his game. I don't think so. Too much came too easy so far in his career. His play with the NDT was more of this. His line was always loaded so things opened up for him. Watching CG play a few games this season, he seems to be adverse to getting into crowds and mucking it up as wings in the NHL need to do in order to be successful. On defense, he is lost on the ice.
I continue to believe he'll be a 30-goal scorer in the NHL, albeit an aggravating and inconsistent one.
 
A brief history of "There's only one ball/puck":

  • You only need 1 good Receiver.
  • You only need 2 good Receivers.
  • You only need a couple of power hitters.
  • There's no reason to build a deep bullpen.
  • Lebron/Wade/Bosh is too many stars.
  • The Kevin Durant Warriors won't work.

We'll never learn.
 
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I still think it's likely he's going to be a good and useful player but it was always insane to me that the Flyers were acting like it was Rebuild Accomplished after drafting just him and before they had Michkov. Worrying process.
He'll be ok. Maybe the equivalent overall of a Tyson Foerster. If so, that's not what one would expect out of a #5 selection. Then it was a weak draft. I wanted Jiricek but he hasn't shown much yet in his career either.
 
Cutter's tied in career points with the #5 pick in 2014, Michael Dal Colle.


Christ, the Avs took a guy who never had a single NHL point two spots ahead of Pastrnak. Weird how that didn't ruin their franchise.

Getting a lot of moves right really does a lot to mitigate the misses. The misses look all the worse when all those moves we are told don't matter go wrong.
 
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A brief history of "There's only one ball/puck":

  • You only need 1 good Receiver.
  • You only need 2 good Receivers.
  • You only need a couple of power hitters.
  • There's no reason to build a deep bullpen.
  • Lebron/Wade/Bosh is too many stars.
  • The Kevin Durant Warriors won't work.

We'll never learn.
Baseball is a discrete event game. The balance isn't between hitters, but hitters and defense, think Marsh v Rojas in CF.

A deep bullpen is similar to a good backup goaltender, you don't always need it, but when you do, it better be there.

We've see plenty of basketball teams struggle with too many offensive stars and no one playing defense or rebounding. One reason is contracts tend to be based on scoring, not WAR, so no one wants to defer their touches. It's more obvious than the NHL b/c top players hog most of the PT.

In football, it's not the receivers, it's the receiving corp, as we see with the Eagles, two fine receivers but no slot WR and a TE who can't stay healthy can negate some of the impact of those WRs.
 
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They didn't screw up his development.
Provorov was stubborn to a fault, and he was physically maxed out at 19.
He thought he was a star, turns out he was a complementary player who only played well with the right partner.
Yes, they did screw up his development. They played him as their 1D since he was 19/20 when most defenseman are breaking in at sheltered roles and protected by veterans. Provorov got so frustrated with the struggles and the team losing that it affected him mentally. He has never recovered and never fully developed. The Flyers again, put winning every year above player development. It's a text book case of poor player development. It should be an example in the manual of how not to develop a young defenseman.
 
Yes, they did screw up his development. They played him as their 1D since he was 19/20 when most defenseman are breaking in at sheltered roles and protected by veterans. Provorov got so frustrated with the struggles and the team losing that it affected him mentally. He has never recovered and never fully developed. The Flyers again, put winning every year above player development. It's a text book case of poor player development. It should be an example in the manual of how not to develop a young defenseman.
That's not true. When he started out he was fundamentally sound defensively, great at sealing off the puck against the forecheck, for example. I think what killed his development was scoring 17 goals his second season, now he wanted to be a star offensive defensemen, which was above his pay grade.
 
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Provorov's play was very partner-dependent. Provorov had an excellent 2nd season, which was Ghost's rookie year where he took the league by storm.

Then Ghost suffered injuries and his game severely dropped his sophomore season, and Provorov's game stumbled severely, too, without a decent partner. Provy's 4th season they get Niskanen to pair with him, and Provorov bounces back. Then Niskanen retired, Provorov had to kind of do it all himself and started entering full diva mode, the goaltending went to hell, and the rest is history.
 
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I will concede that Vigneault was partly responsible for Provorov's regression. His putrid stretch breakout systems choked off things Provorov actually did do well, mostly rush activation. But Provorov was treated like the golden child from the get-go. He received all the minutes with the best partner/forwards, never had the specter of a scratch lurking behind him, never had to play RD when it was asked of every other lefty, couldn't be removed from the PP (despite being a useless statue) because he would react poorly. He is the best (only?) example of a Flyers prospect being coddled.

Provorov's best years were his D+2 and D+4 (with partners who outperformed him both years). That doesn't square with a ruined arc. I remember he went like 2000 minutes across seasons at one point with 1 primary assist at 5v5. He lacked higher level creativity/playmaking back to juniors.

He was always toeing the line between hyper-confidence and egotism. As the team floundered and he regressed, the egotism took over. It's hard for me to say he was ruined when I watched the Flyers totally fumble Couturier and Sanheim's development (among others) and not ruin them. Sanheim was more obviously talented, while getting scraps, but his attitude was the polar opposite.
 

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