Prospect Info: 60th Overall, Albert Johansson, LD

[Henkka]

It's really phenomenal how he is developing.

Everything looked bad under Lalonde (and Boughner). He was scary young little kid, but so was Gustafsson and all those 3rd pair guys. That was bad coaching.

Now, it's a total new world and ballgame with McLellan and Trent Yawney. It looks like every guy is playing like god damn Nicklas Lidström did.

My god I love these days. Gonna surprise every day, when some kid is better than he was yesterday.

I don't know if anyone cares about advanced stats, Johansson is from McLellan-era 16 games:

Top2 in CF% (after Seider)
Best at GF%
Top3 at xGF% (after Edvinsson and Petry)

Imo, he could have best overall stats for last 16 games, if we combine these. Not gonna go that far, it does not do any favours for anyone, it's just the team internal rank.

 

[DoMakc]

The notion of "anchoring" a pairing is vague, so I'm not going to argue about that. But there's some historical revisionism here. Coffey, Murphy, and Schneider were all great in Detroit. (In my view, Coffey and Murphy were both better than Rafalski, and Schneider was about as good as Rafalski. But I'm not going to try to make that case. I'm just here to celebrate some great Wings from years past.)

Coffey played 3.375 seasons in Detroit, and he was a force the entire time: 239 points in 231 games, 50 points in 49 playoff games. He was probably the team's best player in 1995 (Norris, 4th in Hart voting). Bowman eventually traded him as part of the package for Shanahan. It's not like Bowman shipped him off for nothing.

Murphy never had a bad season in his career. His first three years in Detroit, he was 5th, 7th, and 18th in dman scoring. His play dropped off in his last year, but he was a good player even then. If you want to see how important he was to the Wings from 1997-2000, look at the TOI for those years.

Schneider had no problem hitting the net. His 21 goals in 2006 were more than Lidstrom's career high. He also had more points than Lidstrom in 2004.

Funny that you are talking about historical revisionism. Your post reeks scoresheet hindsight. Murphy never had a bad season? Tell that Leafs fans, he was literally run out of Toronto. Bur maybe Mickey Redmond is just too old and does not remember things properly, because he mentions this fact quite often. Schneider was never a good defender, mostly because of skating, there is no way he was better than Rafalski. Everybody was happy when Red Wings signed Rafalski and Schneider went to Ducks. But actually he never played that much with Lidström, especially after lockout, I'm not sure why he was brought up in the first place . Coffey was great offensive defenseman, but it is true that Bowman wanted to get rid of him, for the same reason Yzerman had to change his game completely - he wanted them to be able to defend. Before Toronto, Red Wings were an example of regular season champion that cannot win in playoffs. For how great Coffey was as a player, three teams won Stanley Cup immediately after they traded him away - which does not sound like he was that important to success of those teams. All three players were not Andreas Lilja, but they have something in common - great offensive defensemen with very questionable defensive skills, in very late stage of their career, they had a career renaissance with Lidstrom taking a lot of defensive burden from them. All of them very just complimentary players at that stage, and they were carried way more by Lidström than other way around. But again points is the only way to judge defensemen, i have no argument here...

 

[TheGelatinousCube]

Funny that you are talking about historical revisionism. Your post reeks scoresheet hindsight. Murphy never had a bad season? Tell that Leafs fans, he was literally run out of Toronto. Bur maybe Mickey Redmond is just too old and does not remember things properly, because he mentions this fact quite often. Schneider was never a good defender, mostly because of skating, there is no way he was better than Rafalski. Everybody was happy when Red Wings signed Rafalski and Schneider went to Ducks. But actually he never played that much with Lidström, especially after lockout, I'm not sure why he was brought up in the first place . Coffey was great offensive defenseman, but it is true that Bowman wanted to get rid of him, for the same reason Yzerman had to change his game completely - he wanted them to be able to defend. Before Toronto, Red Wings were an example of regular season champion that cannot win in playoffs. For how great Coffey was as a player, three teams won Stanley Cup immediately after they traded him away - which does not sound like he was that important to success of those teams. All three players were not Andreas Lilja, but they have something in common - great offensive defensemen with very questionable defensive skills, in very late stage of their career, they had a career renaissance with Lidstrom taking a lot of defensive burden from them. All of them very just complimentary players at that stage, and they were carried way more by Lidström than other way around. But again points is the only way to judge defensemen, i have no argument here...

I don't want to argue about things I didn't say or don't believe, so I'll say at the outset that I don't think Schneider was better than Rafalski, and I don't think anyone ever carried Lidstrom. Lidstrom is clearly the best dman ever to play for the Wings, and he had a much better career than Coffey or Murphy. I do think, however, that 1995 was the only season of Lidstrom's career when he was outperformed by another dman on his team, and I think Murphy was much more than a complementary piece.

Murphy was run out of Toronto, but he never had a bad season in his career. He also was not defensively questionable during his Detroit years. Bowman began to rely on him heavily as soon as he arrived. In 1998, Murphy was second on the team in TOI, both regular season and playoffs. In 1999 he was second in the regular season, third in the playoffs. In 2000, he was third in the regular season, second in the playoffs. I don't know if TOI is available for 1997, but Murphy was on the first pairing with Lidstrom in the final at least.

Schneider was a questionable defender, no doubt about it. He was offensively effective in his years in Detroit, and to say otherwise is inaccurate. He was Lidstrom's main partner in 2004, which was the basis for mentioning him.

Coffey was also a questionable defender, and it's true that Bowman was highly critical of him and eventually traded him. But this came after three full seasons and four playoff runs. Despite Coffey's defensive shortcomings, he was likely the Wings best player in 1995, when he led the team in points, offensive win shares, and defensive win shares. The Wings made it to one final and one conference final with Coffey. Did the Wings win in 1997 because they traded him or because they added Shanahan and Murphy? It's impossible to say, though Coffey did win the Stanley Cup four times in his career, in addition to having international success. It was certainly possible to win with him.

 

[RabidBadger]

If AlJo is here to stay and continues to improve, that to me is the biggest silver lining of this season (outside of the coaching change). It's another brick in place for the future and one less prospect you have to worry about panning out. ASP is looking like a sure bet. Any other defense prospect that hits would be icing on the cake.