Speculation: Armchair GM - Offseason Thread (Summer Edition)

[JacketsDavid]

Article from The Athletic listing the teams who have made the most improvement this offseason. They had the CBJ at 18th with this little gem added to the article. "Even with Severson and Provorov in tow, the Blue Jackets still have a bottom-10 defense corps. And they’re not at the top of that list."

Well the defense was bad last year.
The biggest addition is Zach who missed most of the year. Next biggest addition is a coach who can get the team to play defense (crazy concept I know).

 

[ThirdPeriodTurtle]

Would love to know how in the world Pittsburgh could pull that off cap-wise.

I'm no expert on either team but Granlund ($5M) going the other way probably helps a lot. Add Jeff Carter and that's a good base ($3.125M; f* him and all that). Carter has an NMC though, so maybe not realistic - maybe Jan Rutta or someone else has to go... But it doesn't look too hard to pull off.

 

[Xoggz22]

Article from The Athletic listing the teams who have made the most improvement this offseason. They had the CBJ at 18th with this little gem added to the article. "Even with Severson and Provorov in tow, the Blue Jackets still have a bottom-10 defense corps. And they’re not at the top of that list."

Read the article. Didn't understand it and how they concluded what they did. I mean CBJ will see a goal differntial improvement simply from adding a healthy NHL body. The fact it didn't mention Babcock (Structure), Werenski (or any injuries from that standpoint) and you can't tell me adding Severson and Provorov over the AHL players we had or sliding Gudbranson down to his rightful bottom pair/bench position, is ludicrous. I mean if anyone here truly thinks our goal differential of -116 last year will only improve by the proposed 1.7 goals... give me a freaking break. I try not to shit on Dom when the articles come out. I know he puts effort into these but my God they tend to be incomplete pictures at best.

Taking the guidelines of the article itself, just the players alone will account for a better than 1.7 goal differential improvement. That artical was not worth the read and I'm sorry I did. Another time I've been disappointed with the angle of the article - not the CBJ result. Such is life I guess. Fool me once.... damn... that's probably 4 or 5 times now. Crap

 

[Xoggz22]

Would love to know how in the world Pittsburgh could pull that off cap-wise.

Well, the Sharks will heavily retain - maybe as much as 50%. They could get a 3rd team involved (like Chicago) that wouldn't be in Cap trouble for the next 3-4 years and Pittsburgh can send some salary back. Where I don't see how they do it is they have so few assets to make that type of move. Unless they are giving up a couple futurre 1sts, they have an attrocious prospect pool, no young talent on the roster they can afford to move... Just doesn't feel like a fit yet somehow that's what is likely to happen.

Honestly, I still don't know that they are a threat and will continue to be a bubble team as their roster ages/declines. Their stars are no longer superstars and their depth is limited with questionable goaltending (sounds familiar)

 

[CBJx614]

Read the article. Didn't understand it and how they concluded what they did. I mean CBJ will see a goal differntial improvement simply from adding a healthy NHL body. The fact it didn't mention Babcock (Structure), Werenski (or any injuries from that standpoint) and you can't tell me adding Severson and Provorov over the AHL players we had or sliding Gudbranson down to his rightful bottom pair/bench position, is ludicrous. I mean if anyone here truly thinks our goal differential of -116 last year will only improve by the proposed 1.7 goals... give me a freaking break. I try not to shit on Dom when the articles come out. I know he puts effort into these but my God they tend to be incomplete pictures at best.

Taking the guidelines of the article itself, just the players alone will account for a better than 1.7 goal differential improvement. That artical was not worth the read and I'm sorry I did. Another time I've been disappointed with the angle of the article - not the CBJ result. Such is life I guess. Fool me once.... damn... that's probably 4 or 5 times now. Crap

 

[cbjthrowaway]

I'm no expert on either team but Granlund ($5M) going the other way probably helps a lot. Add Jeff Carter and that's a good base ($3.125M; f* him and all that). Carter has an NMC though, so maybe not realistic - maybe Jan Rutta or someone else has to go... But it doesn't look too hard to pull off.

i keep seeing stuff about pittsburgh needing to send back petry or granlund or carter, but they're asking sjs to retain a LOT of money on karlsson already. the contracts they'd send back would have negative value. i don't think pittsburgh has the assets to both pay for retained karlsson + pay SJS more on top of that to take back bad money.

from a pure financial standpoint, taking back petry + retaining karlsson down to like $8m would cost their ownership something like $20m+ in real money – there's no reason to make that ask unless you are getting a MASSIVE package of futures that pittsburgh simply does not have.

I try not to shit on Dom when the articles come out. I know he puts effort into these but my God they tend to be incomplete pictures at best.

dom never really digs for extra context in pieces like this, he just takes whatever his model spits out and writes that, making sure to brag whenever it lines up with reality. i know it's a lot of words, but i wouldn't call it 'putting a lot of effort' into that piece – he's been phoning it in for a while.

there's also a major editorial issue with this piece: dom, to his credit, says at the top of the piece that it's limited in its scope (can only judge player in/out, not player growth or coaching changes), but the headline the athletic chose was "which teams improved the most" – without dom adding any subjective context outside of his model, it's a different piece than the title suggests.

also, i will never miss an opportunity to bring this up – dom once wrote this about brandon montour as a trade target before he got moved to florida: "tough minutes are no excuse and he'd likely struggle regardless of role"

now dom's model says he's one of the best defensemen in the league – and the best defenseman on a team that just got to the cup final.

his model also said gavrikov stunk, then became good after going to LAK. a few years ago, when the kings were awful, it said that drew doughty was thoroughly cooked and among the worst defensemen in the league. now it says he's great.

the same year dom's model said doughty was bad, doughty was near the bottom of the league in +/-. the stat dorks who spent years ripping on that stat worked tirelessly to build a statistical model that… has pretty much the exact same flaws as that metric. it's all hubris – there's a reason why actual teams aren't knocking on dom or jfresh's doors to hire them.

 

[Marioesque]

the same year dom's model said doughty was bad, doughty was near the bottom of the league in +/-. the stat dorks who spent years ripping on that stat worked tirelessly to build a statistical model that… has pretty much the exact same flaws as that metric. it's all hubris – there's a reason why actual teams aren't knocking on dom or jfresh's doors to hire them.

Jfresh tweeted his models predictions yesterday, and he seemingly hated the models output but had to put it out there anyway. At least he knows it's not ideal. I don't know if Dom does

 

[Jovavic]

I'm all for the Pens doing this with their aging core and be absolute dogshit for years once those players are done being effective and they have f*** all to rebuild with.

Who's the consensus best 12 year old prospect? The NHL will gift him there in six years.

 

[CBJx614]

Not exactly pertaining to CBJ, but he used to play so I assume people still care.

 

[Long Live Lyle]

Well, the Sharks will heavily retain - maybe as much as 50%. They could get a 3rd team involved (like Chicago) that wouldn't be in Cap trouble for the next 3-4 years and Pittsburgh can send some salary back. Where I don't see how they do it is they have so few assets to make that type of move. Unless they are giving up a couple futurre 1sts, they have an attrocious prospect pool, no young talent on the roster they can afford to move... Just doesn't feel like a fit yet somehow that's what is likely to happen.

Honestly, I still don't know that they are a threat and will continue to be a bubble team as their roster ages/declines. Their stars are no longer superstars and their depth is limited with questionable goaltending (sounds familiar)

Probably should’ve clarified “in combination without completely gutting any future assets”. You’d be asking Chicago (even at 25% retention and minimal cap impact in the near term, and the last year of which would coincide with Bedard’s new contract) to pay $9.5M in real money over the next 4 years for someone not on their roster. You’re asking SJ to pay $19M in real money. And you’re sending bad assets/contracts the other way. And, of course, Karlsson is still a pretty highly-valued player himself.

i keep seeing stuff about pittsburgh needing to send back petry or granlund or carter, but they're asking sjs to retain a LOT of money on karlsson already. the contracts they'd send back would have negative value. i don't think pittsburgh has the assets to both pay for retained karlsson + pay SJS more on top of that to take back bad money.

from a pure financial standpoint, taking back petry + retaining karlsson down to like $8m would cost their ownership something like $20m+ in real money – there's no reason to make that ask unless you are getting a MASSIVE package of futures that pittsburgh simply does not have.

Yeah, exactly.

 

[VT]

And Dmitry Voronkov



Dmitry Yashkanin is a former bodybuilder now a coach.

 

[ThirdPeriodTurtle]

i keep seeing stuff about pittsburgh needing to send back petry or granlund or carter, but they're asking sjs to retain a LOT of money on karlsson already. the contracts they'd send back would have negative value. i don't think pittsburgh has the assets to both pay for retained karlsson + pay SJS more on top of that to take back bad money.

from a pure financial standpoint, taking back petry + retaining karlsson down to like $8m would cost their ownership something like $20m+ in real money – there's no reason to make that ask unless you are getting a MASSIVE package of futures that pittsburgh simply does not have.

While this is true, how much do the collective "we" value Karlsson? As a personal anecdote, during the tank season I was watching some of the Sharks games hoping they would score, hoping Karlsson would make some magic, and... he kinda sucked defensively. I guess it's been known for a while now but it was an eye opener to me personally. Maybe it was a bad stretch but anyway he's probably not worth $11.5M. So SJS taking back some negative value contracts is a given and doesn't necessarily affect the trade value (and needed to make it work for cap crunched teams)... But yeah it Pittsburgh doesn't have any futures then that's tough.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Not exactly pertaining to CBJ, but he used to play so I assume people still care.

Hope nuti is able to recover and have a fantastic life away from hockey. Great story

 

[ProfessorFink22]

i keep seeing stuff about pittsburgh needing to send back petry or granlund or carter, but they're asking sjs to retain a LOT of money on karlsson already. the contracts they'd send back would have negative value. i don't think pittsburgh has the assets to both pay for retained karlsson + pay SJS more on top of that to take back bad money.

from a pure financial standpoint, taking back petry + retaining karlsson down to like $8m would cost their ownership something like $20m+ in real money – there's no reason to make that ask unless you are getting a MASSIVE package of futures that pittsburgh simply does not have.

Petry is due a $3 million signing bonus this year, so Granlund + Petry for Karlsson, if done after that signing bonus is given (idk the date), would actually save the Sharks in terms of real money, about $1 million. Petry + Granlund are a combined 11.25 cap hit for two more years, so it's basically money in = money out on the cap, and both Petry and Granlund only have 2 years left, which I wouldn't think bothers the Sharks as much because they won't be in their window by then. If they took on both Petry and Granlund, they might not have to retain at all on Karlsson, which I'm sure would sound good to them.

I don't think the ++ would have to be premium if that was the baseline of the deal, and if Pittsburgh is gonna be all in to win, they mind as well fully commit. That being said, I still don't know if they have the futures to give up to make the deal work.

edit: Petry has a 15 team NTC, so that's a sticky one.

 

[Long Live Lyle]

Petry is due a $3 million signing bonus this year, so Granlund + Petry for Karlsson, if done after that signing bonus is given (idk the date), would actually save the Sharks in terms of real money, about $1 million. Petry + Granlund are a combined 11.25 cap hit for two more years, so it's basically money in = money out on the cap, and both Petry and Granlund only have 2 years left, which I wouldn't think bothers the Sharks as much because they won't be in their window by then. If they took on both Petry and Granlund, they might not have to retain at all on Karlsson, which I'm sure would sound good to them.

I don't think the ++ would have to be premium if that was the baseline of the deal, and if Pittsburgh is gonna be all in to win, they mind as well fully commit. That being said, I still don't know if they have the futures to give up to make the deal work.

edit: Petry has a 15 team NTC, so that's a sticky one.

I’m not sure why the bolded would be the case. They’d be trading the reigning Norris winner for two guys that do nothing to help them long-term. The only benefit I guess would be freed cap space in 2025-26 and 2026-27 (which still might be a bit early in their window anyway; this is a major rebuild)? Seems like that benefit would not be enough to prevent a significant ++ of futures/prospects.

 

[BB88]

Pens going for Karlsson would be great.

They’d be like Detroit at the end of their run, not good enough to make a real run and have absolutely nothing to build on once Crosby is gone

 

[ProfessorFink22]

I’m not sure why the bolded would be the case. They’d be trading the reigning Norris winner for two guys that do nothing to help them long-term. The only benefit I guess would be freed cap space in 2025-26 and 2026-27 (which still might be a bit early in their window anyway; this is a major rebuild)? Seems like that benefit would not be enough to prevent a significant ++ of futures/prospects.

I guess 'premium' is a subjective word, we could be picturing different things. Along with Petry and Granlund, I could see one good and one middling future asset (I don't think Pittsburgh has any great future assets anyway). Pickering and a 2nd? I don't know, I'm no good at trade evaluations. Even that seems too rich for Pittsburgh, without SJ retaining, to me.

I know SJ's goal is building futures, and the benefit of just getting out of Karlsson's contract isn't enough positive value for them. I just don't think they'll get what they want and they'll have to settle.

The reason I don't think the return would be enormous is I think mostly tied to that a) San Jose hasn't gotten one yet after all this time, (waiting to get "their" return didn't really work for Arizona with Chychrun for example), and b) the factoring that Karlsson will still not be worth his contract in probably any of the next four years. Maybe next year, mayyyyybe the year after, but years 3 and 4 on that contract will most likely be very bad, even after last year.

 

[MAHJ71]

Hope nuti is able to recover and have a fantastic life away from hockey. Great story

I was always rooting for him to be successful. I remember when he first started getting regular playing time he had a group of friends fly in and they all had his jersey on for the game. Wild, but fun bunch.

 

[Doggy]

Read the article. Didn't understand it and how they concluded what they did. I mean CBJ will see a goal differntial improvement simply from adding a healthy NHL body. The fact it didn't mention Babcock (Structure), Werenski (or any injuries from that standpoint) and you can't tell me adding Severson and Provorov over the AHL players we had or sliding Gudbranson down to his rightful bottom pair/bench position, is ludicrous. I mean if anyone here truly thinks our goal differential of -116 last year will only improve by the proposed 1.7 goals... give me a freaking break. I try not to shit on Dom when the articles come out. I know he puts effort into these but my God they tend to be incomplete pictures at best.

Taking the guidelines of the article itself, just the players alone will account for a better than 1.7 goal differential improvement. That artical was not worth the read and I'm sorry I did. Another time I've been disappointed with the angle of the article - not the CBJ result. Such is life I guess. Fool me once.... damn... that's probably 4 or 5 times now. Crap

I think you make an important point not accounted for in the article. Maybe Seversen and Provorov are good for a +1.7 Goal Differential over average but if the two guys they replace in the lineup were a combined -10 Goal Differential under average then the net change is +11.7.

While this is not a black and white positive for the CBJ, Dom's model does not appear to account for players traded at the TDL. Seems to me Gavrikov played 2/3 season in Columbus, he is a loss for us although I am sure his GDR tanked having to play top line minutes in Z's absence. Same with Orlov in Washington, Horvat a positive on Long Island, etc.

It's easy to criticize this kinds of models but they are narrow in focus...miss a lot of things. That said, Dom has to cover 32 teams while we can focus on just one. He is at a disadvantage from that standpoint. He has to rely more on numbers he can apply to every team.

 

[CBJx614]

Living in Philly and watching most games with Provorov over the years, and many in person, I can assure you that Provorov will be a huge surprise for Jackets fans. He is at his best when he's paired with a steady partner who doesn't gamble or make glaring mistakes. Provorov can play the game any way you like, but he prefers to take some chances here and there.

He's also never been sheltered like he will be in Columbus. He was always the Flyers de facto number 1 and forced to punch above his weight class without much support. He's also a warrior -- I've seen this cat play through injuries that would keep most players out for a couple of weeks.

That's part of why I'm so surprised so many CBJ fans are pessimistic about this upcoming season. Just the defense being healthy would be a huge improvement, but adding both Provy and Severson on top of being healthy should be a HUGE influx of skill and stability

 

[Cyclones Rock]

That's part of why I'm so surprised so many CBJ fans are pessimistic about this upcoming season. Just the defense being healthy would be a huge improvement, but adding both Provy and Severson on top of being healthy should be a HUGE influx of skill and stability

I've been in the pessimistic camp for a long time. That being said, I'm very optimistic about the coming season. While I'm not pleased with the term nor AAV for Severson, I think he'll be part of a big improvement over last season's sorry Dman collection.

The goaltending situation is my biggest concern-as I'm sure it is most others. If Elvis plays at his level of last season and no one else steps up, it's going to be a long season if Jarmo doesn't dig deep for replacements. But even if the goaltending makes it a trying season, watching Fantilli and Jiricek should prove enjoyable.

From a personal standpoint, I hope that Danforth remains healthy all season and is able to show where he fits in the NHL. I enjoy the hell out of watching Blankenburg and am hoping for him to stay healthy and not become Ryan Murray v2.0 in terms of never ending injuries.

If the goaltending is just adequate, the there's no reason that the CBJ shouldn't be pushing for a playoff spot. The team is more talented and there will be a head coach who isn't in over his head.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

That's part of why I'm so surprised so many CBJ fans are pessimistic about this upcoming season. Just the defense being healthy would be a huge improvement, but adding both Provy and Severson on top of being healthy should be a HUGE influx of skill and stability

I think a lot of the pessimism is rooted into the East being an absolute bear, and us returning with the same two goalies who have sucked the last few years. Which is hard to say they’re wrong even if I’m the optimistic camp.

 

[Youngguns1380]

I think a lot of the pessimism is rooted into the East being an absolute bear, and us returning with the same two goalies who have sucked the last few years. Which is hard to say they’re wrong even if I’m the optimistic camp.

I have to say realistically - I have no faith in the goaltending. If Elvis produces awesome but I am prepared for injuries, excuses and fair to middling play by our goaltenders. I really hope I am wrong but this is a big gamble going into this season without some insurance.

 

[Boxscore]

That's part of why I'm so surprised so many CBJ fans are pessimistic about this upcoming season. Just the defense being healthy would be a huge improvement, but adding both Provy and Severson on top of being healthy should be a HUGE influx of skill and stability

As an outsider, there's a lot to like looking at the Jackets situation.

Most UFAs take a year to get comfortable with their new teams before going on a tear. I think Guadreau is going to flirt with 100 points next season. Laine, if healthy, should score 35 goals or more. Johnson will have another season of development behind him and should be a better contributor. Fantilli will bring some instant excitement, fanfare, and added skill to the Top 6.

Getting Werenski back is massive for the Jackets and now he has two other proven, rock solid (and in Provorov's case --a borderline star) blue line additions to help support him. Jiricek will be scratching and clawing to make the show full-time.

New coach in Babcock who will ensure the players work, work, work. Yes, there are some questions about goal, but there's a lot to like in Columbus.