Are we heading in the right direction? 2025 Version

[Sorinth]

He played centre in CHI — almost entirely for his 2nd and 3rd season. Can you name the games he played wing? He’s taken FOs in almost all the games.

If you know he played center almost entirely then why don't you already know which games he played wing?

And before you post the faceoff data keep in mind in his first year with us where he spent most of the year at wing he still took faceoffs in 39 of 58 games, and if he played with a left shot center it likely would've have been even higher.

 

[CzarDemidov]

If you know he played center almost entirely then why don't you already know which games he played wing?

And before you post the faceoff data keep in mind in his first year with us where he spent most of the year at wing he still took faceoffs in 39 of 58 games, and if he played with a left shot center it likely would've have been even higher.

Listen man, I don’t want a dumb argument. I’m trying to figure this out — did he really play W for CHI over any stretch of time? How many games?

I did a filter of 5 FOs and he seems to have taken 5 or more every game in his 2nd and 3rd season. He averaged 7-10 FOs between those two seasons.

So help me out here if you’re so sure


I don’t think he played W much at all. He just sucked, which led to CHI dumping him.

 

[Sorinth]

They picked

3rd overall
3rd overall
23rd overall
2nd overall
1st overall
11th overall
23rd overall
10th overall
15th overall
13th overall
12th overall

In an 11 year span.. they fit the definition clearly of a team that bottomed out continuously to build into a contender.

Looking at draft position can be misleading because teams can go out and sign big name UFAs, trade prospects and young NHLers for vets and still finish at the bottom. When that happens it's not tanking, and similarly it's not tanking when you suck because a couple of your best players miss most of the season. We had a 7 year period where we drafted 3rd OA twice and 9th OA. Did we tank during that period? The answer is no. You have to look at what moves they actually made to know if they were tanking or not.

 

[Fledgemyhedge]

I am glad some of you are not in control of the team. Admit we are heading in the right direction, but then want to fire one of top 3 dmen into the sun.

You giving lessons on how to make sure we are no longer trending in the right direction?

Losing an 8 turnover a game defenceman is addition by subtraction. At the very least he should be playing a way smaller role because he currently can’t handle what he was given

 

[Sorinth]

Listen man, I don’t want a dumb argument. I’m trying to figure this out — did he really play W for CHI over any stretch of time? How many games?

I did a filter of 5 FOs and he seems to have taken 5 or more every game in his 2nd and 3rd season. He averaged 7-10 FOs between those two seasons.

So help me out here if you’re so sure


I don’t think he played W much at all. He just sucked, which led to CHI dumping him.

I posted an article about it. Do you think the writer made the whole thing up and Dach wasn't moved to wing again like it stated?

And there must be something wrong with your filter because if you go to nhl.com in 2021-2022 season there were 20 games where Dach had 4 or less faceoffs.

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

 

[CzarDemidov]

I posted an article about it. Do you think the writer made the whole thing up and Dach wasn't moved to wing again like it stated?

And there must be something wrong with your filter because if you go to nhl.com in 2021-2022 season there were 20 games where Dach had 4 or less faceoffs.

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

Moving a struggling player around is pretty typical. I don’t take any stock in it indicating that Dach was playing well as a C or a W.

In his 21-22 season he sucked terribly bad and even if you take 20 games out (my filter failed somehow, I should’ve paid closer attention) it doesn’t make any material difference to my point: the majority of his GP came at C and he sucked.

Whatever position he played from Jan 1 to the end of season in 2022, he stank and got himself traded away to the next sucker

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

 

[WeThreeKings]

People have got to stop using "tanking" as shorthand for rebuilding or building through the draft. Tanking almost never happens and the premise behind it (accepting being bad to get high pick(s) doesn't mean tanking (selling off everything to be bad).

Florida was bad because they were poorly managed and couldn't spend a ton. But they also started to improve when they committed to actually trying to get high picks. They made the playoffs once between 2000-2001 and 2014-2015. And the only reason they did in 2011-2012 is that they victimized a frankly worse than usual Southleast division (which was generally a pretty terrible division in part because Washington overreacted to Montreal upsetting them in 2010 and Tampa sweeping them in 2011).

Looking at draft position can be misleading because teams can go out and sign big name UFAs, trade prospects and young NHLers for vets and still finish at the bottom. When that happens it's not tanking, and similarly it's not tanking when you suck because a couple of your best players miss most of the season. We had a 7 year period where we drafted 3rd OA twice and 9th OA. Did we tank during that period? The answer is no. You have to look at what moves they actually made to know if they were tanking or not.

Whether you want to call it 'tanking' or not; the sentiment is the same. They accumulated a wealth of top picks over a long period of time. Every team in a rebuild wants to get out of it sooner rather than later, there's revenue at stake. It's disingenuous to suggest that the Florida Panthers were not built out of being in the bottom for a long period of time.

 

[Sorinth]

Moving a struggling player around is pretty typical. I don’t take any stock in it indicating that Dach was playing well as a C or a W.

It wasn't meant to prove he's better at C or W, what it proves is that your assertion that he played almost entirely C when in Chicago was false.

In his 21-22 season he sucked terribly bad and even if you take 20 games out (my filter failed somehow, I should’ve paid closer attention) it doesn’t make any material difference to my point: the majority of his GP came at C and he sucked.

Whatever position he played from Jan 1 to the end of season in 2022, he stank and got himself traded away to the next sucker

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

None of which is relevant to the claims you made. The truth is Dach's best stretch of games was when he moved back to center after his time at wing alongside Suzuki and he played both center and wing in Chicago. That's the only thing I'm arguing.

 

[Sorinth]

Whether you want to call it 'tanking' or not; the sentiment is the same. They accumulated a wealth of top picks over a long period of time. Every team in a rebuild wants to get out of it sooner rather than later, there's revenue at stake. It's disingenuous to suggest that the Florida Panthers were not built out of being in the bottom for a long period of time.

And pretty much every team will have top picks on their roster so it becomes meaningless to say a team tanked if the definition of tanking is such that virtually every team qualifies.

 

[Captain Mountain]

Whether you want to call it 'tanking' or not; the sentiment is the same. They accumulated a wealth of top picks over a long period of time. Every team in a rebuild wants to get out of it sooner rather than later, there's revenue at stake. It's disingenuous to suggest that the Florida Panthers were not built out of being in the bottom for a long period of time.

The Panthers (along with the Oilers) are the poster child for the idea if you suck long enough you'll get the picks/prospects/players/trade pieces to build a contender.

The problem I have is "tanking" implies active steps to be as bad as possible in the future. Like, Chicago trading DeBrincat and Dach, among others, was a sign of tanking. Montreal hasn't tanked under Bergevin or HuGo. When they were bad, they made deadline deals and tried to finish as low as possible. The difference between Bergevin is HuGo is that Bergevin was focused on being competitive more quickly and HuGo have been more focused on building a consistently competitive team down the road.

 

[WeThreeKings]

And pretty much every team will have top picks on their roster so it becomes meaningless to say a team tanked if the definition of tanking is such that virtually every team qualifies.

Top picks? Sure.. but a 12 year stretch where they only picked outside of the top 15 twice, that's more than just having a top pick on their roster. The Panthers core pieces were acquired through a long term rebuild and stay at the bottom of the standings. They turned the corner because they hired Zito who was able to bring competence to the team was able to find a lot of pieces to add to his core and get a bunch of great value adds.

The Panthers (along with the Oilers) are the poster child for the idea if you suck long enough you'll get the picks/prospects/players/trade pieces to build a contender.

The problem I have is "tanking" implies active steps to be as bad as possible in the future. Like, Chicago trading DeBrincat and Dach, among others, was a sign of tanking. Montreal hasn't tanked under Bergevin or HuGo. When they were bad, they made deadline deals and tried to finish as low as possible. The difference between Bergevin is HuGo is that Bergevin was focused on being competitive more quickly and HuGo have been more focused on building a consistently competitive team down the road.

Montreal did a rebuild.. I call what Chicago did to be a scorched earth rebuild where they sold everything off completely. I think the term tanking has taken on the meaning of just teams accepting they aren't competing and making moves for a future dated time to be competitive. Retooling is now the notion of doing that for a season where everything went wrong. Bergevin never rebuilt, he just did a lot of retooling.

Tanking was certainly a more egregious concept back in the old days like what Pittsburgh did for Lemieux. Ottawa for Daigle, etc. so I understand why some people push back against the term. I just think fans use it a bit more casually than that. We should all understand what we mean when we use it.

 

[Captain Mountain]

Montreal did a rebuild.. I call what Chicago did to be a scorched earth rebuild where they sold everything off completely. I think the term tanking has taken on the meaning of just teams accepting they aren't competing and making moves for a future dated time to be competitive. Retooling is now the notion of doing that for a season where everything went wrong. Bergevin never rebuilt, he just did a lot of retooling.

Tanking was certainly a more egregious concept back in the old days like what Pittsburgh did for Lemieux. Ottawa for Daigle, etc. so I understand why some people push back against the term. I just think fans use it a bit more casually than that. We should all understand what we mean when we use it.

I don't know, it feels weird to call what Bergevin did tanking and it fits that definition.

 

[Sorinth]

Top picks? Sure.. but a 12 year stretch where they only picked outside of the top 15 twice, that's more than just having a top pick on their roster. The Panthers core pieces were acquired through a long term rebuild and stay at the bottom of the standings. They turned the corner because they hired Zito who was able to bring competence to the team was able to find a lot of pieces to add to his core and get a bunch of great value adds.

Since when are picks 10-15 considered tank picks?

 

[CzarDemidov]

None of which is relevant to the claims you made. The truth is Dach's best stretch of games was when he moved back to center after his time at wing alongside Suzuki and he played both center and wing in Chicago. That's the only thing I'm arguing.

This is only valid if you discount all the games he played at C for CHI, give or take 20 games.

 

[WeThreeKings]

I don't know, it feels weird to call what Bergevin did tanking and it fits that definition.

4 top 15 picks in a 10 year period is not even remotely close. Can't count Galchenyuk since that was the pick he inherited in that draft.

Since when are picks 10-15 considered tank picks?

Since they go to teams that don't make the playoffs. Stop trying to twist yourself into a pretzel to say the Florida Panthers as currently constructed wasn't the result of being in the bottom of the standings for an extended period of time. They were not built the same way as a Boston Bruins team that legitimately never stayed in the bottom and were powered by their picks, free agent signings and trades.

 

[Captain Mountain]

4 top 15 picks in a 10 year period is not even remotely close. Can't count Galchenyuk since that was the pick he inherited in that draft.



Since they go to teams that don't make the playoffs.

If tanking means "teams accepting they aren't competing and making moves for a future dated time to be competitive", then Bergevin selling in 2016 (Weise and Flash for a pick and prospect (Danault)) to get better in 2017 and in 2018 (Plekanec for futures) to get better in 2019 is tanking.

Which is why I think tanking has to be more than that. It has to be an active strategy, not just saying that you aren't competing and making moves for the undefined future.

 

[Sorinth]

This is only valid if you discount all the games he played at C for CHI, give or take 20 games.

Can you define what you meant by the word "stretch" in our context? Because it's clearly not one I'm familiar with.

 

[WeThreeKings]

If tanking means "teams accepting they aren't competing and making moves for a future dated time to be competitive", then Bergevin selling in 2016 (Weise and Flash for a pick and prospect (Danault)) to get better in 2017 and in 2018 (Plekanec for futures) to get better in 2019 is tanking.

Which is why I think tanking has to be more than that. It has to be an active strategy, not just saying that you aren't competing and making moves for the undefined future.

I said in my post that what Bergevin was doing was retooling. Whereby a team accepts that particular season isn't going to result in competing so they sell off UFAs and items like that to get picks and/or prospects, but intend to go back to a playoff position next year and most often do get into the playoffs.

He never rebuilt which is why he had no extra first round picks and did not accumulate a large amount of top 15 picks in his tenure of 10 years.

 

[Captain Mountain]

I said in my post that what Bergevin was doing was retooling. Whereby a team accepts that particular season isn't going to result in competing so they sell off UFAs and items like that to get picks and/or prospects, but intend to go back to a playoff position next year and most often do get into the playoffs.

He never rebuilt which is why he had no extra first round picks and did not accumulate a large amount of top 15 picks in his tenure of 10 years.

I don't disagree, but if this is a semantics thing, then either tanking exists as part of the all-in/win-now/status quo/retool/rebuild spectrum or its separate. If its part of it, I think it would think it denotes a more extreme tear-down rebuild (i.e. tanking a team, running it into the ground) to focus on pure futures and the best pick possible (which is incredibly rare). If its not, then whether the future is next season or not shouldn't really matter.

 

[WeThreeKings]

I don't disagree, but if this is a semantics thing, then either tanking exists as part of the all-in/win-now/status quo/retool/rebuild spectrum or its separate. If its part of it, I think it would think it denotes a more extreme tear-down rebuild (i.e. tanking a team, running it into the ground) to focus on pure futures and the best pick possible (which is incredibly rare). If its not, then whether the future is next season or not shouldn't really matter.

People use tanking as short hand for rebuilding. It doesn't exist as it did back in the day. At most you'll see some teams be ok with not making moves to help their team win next year due to McKenna being a prize.

Scorched Earth Rebuilding/Tanking is what Chicago embarked on.
A rebuild is what Montreal embarked on.
A retool is what Washington/Bergevin did.

 

[dcyhabs]

Losing an 8 turnover a game defenceman is addition by subtraction. At the very least he should be playing a way smaller role because he currently can’t handle what he was given

Turnovers pretty much go with ice time, they include dump ins and such. Many top D have lots.

Most players on the habs are playing roles they can't handle. The habs are missing 2-3 top 9 forwards and a couple of good defensive d-men. We already saw what happens when you take a young guy like Barron and slot him into a lineup with only two vets and two guys who can play D (not all the same guys) on defense. Matheson is definitely not the ideal top pairing solution, but if you take him out you have 27 minutes to distribute among a bunch of players who already can't thrive in the minutes they have. Guhle is fine, Hutson is playing too much already, Carrier shouldn't play more. You end up splitting those minutes among Xhekaj, Struble, and whoever replaces Savard. Bringing Reinbacher and Mailloux into that situation is just asking for them to be in over their heads and be the next guys you want to trade for nothing.

You dump a player or two because they are exposed, that leads to playing other guys in positions where they are exposed, so you fire them into the sun. Some other team picks up those players, cheap, puts them with vets, plays them fewer minutes, and lets them look good. Congrats, now you have the Buffalo Sabres.

 

[Captain Mountain]

Losing an 8 turnover a game defenceman is addition by subtraction. At the very least he should be playing a way smaller role because he currently can’t handle what he was given

Hutson had more turnovers than Matheson in fewer minutes, but I don't think you intend to extend that logic to him.

 

[Fledgemyhedge]

Hutson had more turnovers than Matheson in fewer minutes, but I don't think you intend to extend that logic to him.

Hutson got better as the season went on and there’s an obvious reason why Hutson would have a longer leash than Matheson…. Lol

 

[Captain Mountain]

Hutson got better as the season went on and there’s an obvious reason why Hutson would have a longer leash than Matheson…. Lol

Some D with more giveaways than Matheson last season:

-Weegar
-Bouchard
-Sanheim
-Sergachev
-Werenski
-Hedman
-Harley
-McDonagh
-Makar
-Carlson
-Hutson
-Faber
-Dobson

lol

 

[Fledgemyhedge]

Some D with more giveaways than Matheson last season:

-Weegar
-Bouchard
-Sanheim
-Sergachev
-Werenski
-Hedman
-Harley
-McDonagh
-Makar
-Carlson
-Hutson
-Faber
-Dobson

lol

The nature of the giveaways matter too. Hutson/makar are always going to lead the league in giveaways because they always have the puck and are creating. Many of mathesons giveaways are bobbles and brain fart moments. As stated above they include dump ins etc. I’m talking about what is seen with the eyes