Rutherford: Army extended

[Brian39]

I have a ton of respect for you, Brian, but you can't justify our bad prospect pool by saying we traded away players in good moves, and then proceed to say how bad the prospects we traded away are. That is having it both ways. They were great trades precisely because we gave away so little. As you stated, the prospect pool would still be very meh without them. So if our prospect pool would still be crap without those trades, then that is not the reason our prospect pool is crap.

I am not critiquing the moves, or any moves. I am saying Armstrong pushed for contention by default and he is unwilling to gamble on upside when he does pick. He wants safe NHL prospects to plug in cheaply on the 4th line to continue being able to pay to bring in talent to push for the cup.

I'm going to push back on the bolded portions because I disagree that it is having it both ways and that we're unwilling to gamble on upside. It is simply the reality of consistently drafting in the 20s that you are extremely unlikely to find high end talent. The reality of prospect development in hockey is that holding 10 or so prospects drafted between pick 20 and 32 carries an exceptionally low chance of developing a Cup-caliber core. Our prospect pool would absolutely be better if we had 3-5 more aging mid-to-late first rounders in it, but the odds of any prospect pool created from the picks we held becoming elite are extremely slim. I'm confident that out prospect pool would currently be ranked somewhere in the mid teens if we had held onto all of our picks, which would be a relative success when 8 of your last 10 first round draft slots are 20 or later (with the only two top 20 picks being 14 and 17).

My entire point is that it is exceptionally difficult to build an elite level prospect pool without any top 10 picks. Guys drafted after pick 20 have very low odds of being difference makers at the NHL level.

I'm going to list every guy drafted with picks 20-32 from 2010-2015 and bold the players who I think arugably became (or on the cusp of becoming) genuine difference makers as a top 6 forward, top 4 D, or starting goalie on a contender-capable roster: Bennet, Sheahan, Tinordi, Pysyk, Hayes, Howden, Kuznetsov, Visentin, Coyle, Etem, Nelson, Pitlick, Jared Knight, Connor Murphy, Noesen, Biggs, Morrow, Puempel, Percy, Danault, Namesitikov, Phillips, Jensen, Rakell, Musil, Rattie, Laughton, Jonkowski, Maata, Matheson, M Subban, Schmaltz, Gaunce, Samuelsson, Skjei, Matteau, Pearson, Dansk, Moroz, Mantha, Gauthier, Poirier, Burakowsky, Shinkaruk, McCarron, Shea Theodore, Dano, Klimchuk, Dickinson, Hartman, McCochen, Bigras, Schmaltz, Fabbri, Kapanen, Bleackley, McCann, Pastrnak, Scherbak, Goldobin, Ho-Sang, Kempe, Quenneville, B Lemieux, Hawryluk, Eriksson Ek, White, Samsonov, Boeser, Konecny, Roslovic, Juulson, Larsson, Beauvillier, Carlsson, Merkley, Roy, Christian Fischer.

That's 78 guys who are all now 6-12 years removed from their draft year. I can make a straight faced argument that 18 became or could still become core-caliber (or core-adjacent) players for a team with Cup aspirations. That's about a 23% success rate on late 1st round picks if you define success well below the contributions that the Schenn and RORs of the league bring to a team. If you make 10 selections between 20 and 32 in a 5 or 6 year window to build your prospect pool, the statistically expected result is that you get 2 randomly selected bolded names and 8 randomly selected non-bolded names. Getting 3 bolded names is outperforming expectation by about a 30% margin.

Now the even harsher reality. How many of those names are on par or better than ROR? I can maybe (maaaaaaybe) make some kind of non-ridiculous argument for 4 (Pasta, Theodore, Boeser, and Samsonov). That's a 5% chance that a pick 20-32 returns a player who could arguably become the value of a Cup-caliber 1C. How many of those names are on par or better than Schenn? I'm knocking out Hayes, Nelson, Fabbri, Pearson, Eriksson-Ek and Coyle from that conversation to bring us down to 12 guys that have a case. That gives you about a 15% chance of a guy drafted 20-32 turning into the value of a top-end 2C player. I don't recall many of those bolded names being the sexy high-upside-but-big-bust-potential gambles.

The fact of the matter is that trying to create an elite prospect group with a couple picks in the teens and then a bunch of picks 20 or later is a fool's errand. It isn't having it both ways to acknowledge that while praising Army for turning those lottery tickets into a long-term solution to the 1C and 2C position in the organization. The fact that the prospect pool was destined to be no better than league average is not a critique of the GM. It is simply acknowledging that the vast majority of players drafted 20th or later never become difference makers at the NHL level.

You almost never see the top prospect pools achieve that status based on the development/reputation of picks 14, 26, 27, 31, and 49 (from a 6 year window). Those picks provide the mid-level players of an elite prospect pool who are supplementing the couple of grade A prospects acquired with top 5 picks. Or they provide the top of a prospect pool ranked in the teens and described as 'deep but without any game breaking ability.' The fact that picks 14, 26, 27, 31, and 49 that were moved turned into B or middling prospects is not a knock on Army. That is the likeliest outcome. Tage Thompson is currently 15th in goals, 22nd in points, and 18th in games played among the 2016 draft class. No player drafted 9 selections before or after him has hit the 50 point mark yet. He is exceeding the performance/development of most players drafted around him. He is just the expected value of a 26th overall pick unless you get extremely lucky. 5 years out and no one drafted around him is making him look like a bad pick.

In order to stay competitive, he signed the wrong players to long contracts that is going to make a rebuild a very likely eventuality. He has never shown the ability to sacrifice the now for later, outside of the one time he traded Stastny. I do not trust him to do it wholesale when the time comes.

I fully agree about picking the wrong guys to sign to long deals, but I don't agree about that his resume indicates that he can't effectively lead a rebuild. trading Shatty for futures is another example of him sacrificing the now for later. So was letting Backes walk. In a 1.5 year window we saw Army move on from the team's top two centers and a very well-regarded D man because it became clear that the window with that core had closed. We saw a very public announcement that we were taking 1 step back in order to take 2 steps forward and this process was described as a retool. And he absolutely nailed it. Say what you will about his (I believe too stringent) stance on NMCs, but that stance allowed him to shed Berglund, Sobotka, and Lehtera with zero dollars retained during that retool. He didn't do a tear it down and tank rebuild, but he absolutely showed a complete willingness to sacrifice the now for the future. If a full rebuild is needed (and demanded/approved by ownership), I haven't seen anythignt o suggest he can't do it. And given how often other GMs have completely botched a rebuild, I'm not sure I'm convinced there will be a bette qualified guy available when that day comes.

It is worth noting that there were people who felt a full rebuild was needed if we weren't going all in on the Backes core. There were a lot of people who felt that Petro wasn't a good enough 1D for a Cup team. There were a lot of people saying that it was just too hard to acquire Cup-caliber top 6 centers without top 5-10 picks. When Stastny was moved we were left with a core of Schenn, Tarasenko, Schwartz, Berglund, Sobotka, Steen, Fabbri, Petro, Parayko, J-Bo and Allen. Steen was 34 and on a negative-value contract, Bo was about to turn 35 (and coming off season-ending surgery), Fabbri had just missed the entire season with ACL surgery #2, Berglund had 4 negative-value years left w/ trade protection and Sobotka had 2 years left on a mediocre-value contract. It would have been plenty reasonable to argue for a tear-it-down rebuild at that point and I think a lot of teams would have. As much as I don't like many of the contracts we have given out, I have a hard time saying with certainty that we are going to be more boxed in 3-5 years from now than we were in the spring/summer of 2018. The players are going to "pay back" their HRR debt around the time our bad contracts are starting to look really bad. The cap is going to see massive increases over a 2-3 year window when the HRR split returns to 50/50 and there is a real chance that the money flooded into the system makes it possible to move 1-2 of those contracts (while simultaneously making our remaining dead cap easier to stomach). If I had to bet, I would say that a full rebuild will be needed at some point. But I wouldn't bet any money I couldn't afford to lose. Again, I fully disagree that Army has chosen some poor guys to give long term deals to. I just don't think that those bad deals ensure a full tear it down rebuild vs a substantial retool.

Last year we absolutely should have traded players at the deadline. Now I will admit this could have been an ownership decision. We could have desperately needed the playoff revenue due to no fans all year. But no fans also meant playoff revenue wasn't as much. We had no business even trying to compete last year. The year before,we also should have traded He-who-must-not-be-named if we weren't going to make a good faith offer to sign him. That is a little harder move to make, as we were ostensibly a good team and the Covid break might have hurt an otherwise deep run. But we could have gotten game changing prospects for him. I don't think Armstrong really tried that hard to sign him because he knew he wanted too much from the start. Knowing that, he absolutely should have gotten the haul he would have gotten for him, even at the expense of one year.

GMs can take one of three basic approaches: (1) Sacrifice the future for a run now, (2) maintain a balance between the now and the future, or (3) sacrifice the now for the future. Armstrong does very well in 1, not so well in 2, and has never even tried 3. Barring a miracle or incredibly shrewd GMing, we are heading for 3. You can't be in 1 for too long without needing to hit 3 eventually. Armstrong has earned a shot to extend our window in 1/2. But I don't want him to be in charge when its time to go 3.

Fully disagree about Petro. He had a NTC that he had no incentive to waive. His agency is well known for maximizing his client's value and staying in STL in 2019/20 was absolutely the way to do that. Moreover, we were in a Cup defense, we were the best team in the West and he put up an incredible season. That is absolutely the time to push your chips in rather than selling for the future. Given Petro's ability to fully control the trade destination (or refuse a trade outright) and our status as genuine contenders, trading Petro instead of letting him walk as a UFA is nothing but a fantasy.

I also have zero problem not selling last year. Schwartz's value was as low as ever. He missed 5 weeks with injury and then put up 5 points in 12 games in between his return and the deadline. 14 points in 26 games overall for the season and he had a 15 team no trade list. Given what we know about how hard this season was on him, I'd wager that he had the vast majority of potential destinations interested in a rental on that list. His performance and ability to limit the market almost certainly reduced his value to a mid-low 2nd. Berube destroyed Hoffman's value as much as possible, keeping him on the 2nd PP unit until literally the 1st game after the trade deadline had passed. The only rentals who fetched a 1st were Foligno and Savard, both of which almost certainly had more value than a guy who had been available as a UFA a few months earlier and then floundered somewhat in St. Louis. Both of them went to teams who were willing to go all in and didn't need scoring at the expense of D (Tampa and Toronto). Look at the returns of some of the other guys who moved at the deadline. I really, really don't think we were getting anything more than a couple mid-late 2nds had we moved those 2 guys. Even assuming that standing pat was not influenced by a need for revenue, I don't think the asset return for selling at the deadline last year was high enough to wave a white flag to the locker room and the fans. Trading Bozak very likely means that he isn't coming back on the massively team-friendly contract we got him for and trading Dunn means that we're losing someone else to Seattle. I get the argument to sell last year, but I don't think selling would have been the way to go and I certainly don't think it is predictive that Army won't appropriately recognize the need to rebuild and/or properly handle that rebuild.

 

[Brian39]

The Shattenkirk trade is kind of what he's talking about in terms of trading for cheap guys you can plug in on the 4th line.

It was not. It was essentially the polar opposite.

The Shatty return was a 1st rounder (traded along with one of our own 1st rounders to the Flyers for Schenn) and Sanford. Sanford was commonly used on every Blues' line except the 4th line and this fanbase's biggest criticisms of Sanford were that he was too soft to play the role of a grinder and that Army and/or Berube overvalued him by trying to make him a top 6 scoring threat. Nothing about the Shatty trade even remotely supports the notion that we target cheap plug and play pieces to the 4th line.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

When Brian spends that much time on a meaty post, I feel obligated to read it carefully. I don't know how you guys have the patience to post theses like this.

 

[Celtic Note]

When Brian spends that much time on a meaty post, I feel obligated to read it carefully. I don't know how you guys have the patience to post theses like this.

I only ever post on my phone, so I hope they don’t follow that same habit. I can’t imagine texting something so long and densely packed with info.

 

[Brian39]

When Brian spends that much time on a meaty post, I feel obligated to read it carefully. I don't know how you guys have the patience to post theses like this.

Most of the writing I do for work has to be edited, re-worked, sourced etc. Legal writing is dense with the added pressure of "you can't just make an off the cuff misstatement to a judge."

The stuff I write here is pretty much stream of consciousness. I'm super familiar with hockey reference, hockeydb, nhl.com and natural stat trick, so most of the "research" is just copy/pasting stuff from those sites. It is a nice change of pace from my job and is usually done on lunch breaks, while I'm waiting on hold with a client or sitting in a virtual waiting room for a webex court appearance. Writing about hockey is a great way to pass the time during slow periods at work. I work a desk job with a computer, so I'm typing on a real keyboard and not a phone.

Brevity takes time and effort. I can bang out a long, rambly, and repetitive post pretty quick.

 

[Majorityof1]

I'm going to push back on the bolded portions because I disagree that it is having it both ways and that we're unwilling to gamble on upside. It is simply the reality of consistently drafting in the 20s that you are extremely unlikely to find high end talent. The reality of prospect development in hockey is that holding 10 or so prospects drafted between pick 20 and 32 carries an exceptionally low chance of developing a Cup-caliber core. Our prospect pool would absolutely be better if we had 3-5 more aging mid-to-late first rounders in it, but the odds of any prospect pool created from the picks we held becoming elite are extremely slim. I'm confident that out prospect pool would currently be ranked somewhere in the mid teens if we had held onto all of our picks, which would be a relative success when 8 of your last 10 first round draft slots are 20 or later (with the only two top 20 picks being 14 and 17).

My entire point is that it is exceptionally difficult to build an elite level prospect pool without any top 10 picks. Guys drafted after pick 20 have very low odds of being difference makers at the NHL level.

I'm going to list every guy drafted with picks 20-32 from 2010-2015 and bold the players who I think arugably became (or on the cusp of becoming) genuine difference makers as a top 6 forward, top 4 D, or starting goalie on a contender-capable roster: Bennet, Sheahan, Tinordi, Pysyk, Hayes, Howden, Kuznetsov, Visentin, Coyle, Etem, Nelson, Pitlick, Jared Knight, Connor Murphy, Noesen, Biggs, Morrow, Puempel, Percy, Danault, Namesitikov, Phillips, Jensen, Rakell, Musil, Rattie, Laughton, Jonkowski, Maata, Matheson, M Subban, Schmaltz, Gaunce, Samuelsson, Skjei, Matteau, Pearson, Dansk, Moroz, Mantha, Gauthier, Poirier, Burakowsky, Shinkaruk, McCarron, Shea Theodore, Dano, Klimchuk, Dickinson, Hartman, McCochen, Bigras, Schmaltz, Fabbri, Kapanen, Bleackley, McCann, Pastrnak, Scherbak, Goldobin, Ho-Sang, Kempe, Quenneville, B Lemieux, Hawryluk, Eriksson Ek, White, Samsonov, Boeser, Konecny, Roslovic, Juulson, Larsson, Beauvillier, Carlsson, Merkley, Roy, Christian Fischer.

That's 78 guys who are all now 6-12 years removed from their draft year. I can make a straight faced argument that 18 became or could still become core-caliber (or core-adjacent) players for a team with Cup aspirations. That's about a 23% success rate on late 1st round picks if you define success well below the contributions that the Schenn and RORs of the league bring to a team. If you make 10 selections between 20 and 32 in a 5 or 6 year window to build your prospect pool, the statistically expected result is that you get 2 randomly selected bolded names and 8 randomly selected non-bolded names. Getting 3 bolded names is outperforming expectation by about a 30% margin.

Now the even harsher reality. How many of those names are on par or better than ROR? I can maybe (maaaaaaybe) make some kind of non-ridiculous argument for 4 (Pasta, Theodore, Boeser, and Samsonov). That's a 5% chance that a pick 20-32 returns a player who could arguably become the value of a Cup-caliber 1C. How many of those names are on par or better than Schenn? I'm knocking out Hayes, Nelson, Fabbri, Pearson, Eriksson-Ek and Coyle from that conversation to bring us down to 12 guys that have a case. That gives you about a 15% chance of a guy drafted 20-32 turning into the value of a top-end 2C player. I don't recall many of those bolded names being the sexy high-upside-but-big-bust-potential gambles.

The fact of the matter is that trying to create an elite prospect group with a couple picks in the teens and then a bunch of picks 20 or later is a fool's errand. It isn't having it both ways to acknowledge that while praising Army for turning those lottery tickets into a long-term solution to the 1C and 2C position in the organization. The fact that the prospect pool was destined to be no better than league average is not a critique of the GM. It is simply acknowledging that the vast majority of players drafted 20th or later never become difference makers at the NHL level.

You almost never see the top prospect pools achieve that status based on the development/reputation of picks 14, 26, 27, 31, and 49 (from a 6 year window). Those picks provide the mid-level players of an elite prospect pool who are supplementing the couple of grade A prospects acquired with top 5 picks. Or they provide the top of a prospect pool ranked in the teens and described as 'deep but without any game breaking ability.' The fact that picks 14, 26, 27, 31, and 49 that were moved turned into B or middling prospects is not a knock on Army. That is the likeliest outcome. Tage Thompson is currently 15th in goals, 22nd in points, and 18th in games played among the 2016 draft class. No player drafted 9 selections before or after him has hit the 50 point mark yet. He is exceeding the performance/development of most players drafted around him. He is just the expected value of a 26th overall pick unless you get extremely lucky. 5 years out and no one drafted around him is making him look like a bad pick.



I fully agree about picking the wrong guys to sign to long deals, but I don't agree about that his resume indicates that he can't effectively lead a rebuild. trading Shatty for futures is another example of him sacrificing the now for later. So was letting Backes walk. In a 1.5 year window we saw Army move on from the team's top two centers and a very well-regarded D man because it became clear that the window with that core had closed. We saw a very public announcement that we were taking 1 step back in order to take 2 steps forward and this process was described as a retool. And he absolutely nailed it. Say what you will about his (I believe too stringent) stance on NMCs, but that stance allowed him to shed Berglund, Sobotka, and Lehtera with zero dollars retained during that retool. He didn't do a tear it down and tank rebuild, but he absolutely showed a complete willingness to sacrifice the now for the future. If a full rebuild is needed (and demanded/approved by ownership), I haven't seen anythignt o suggest he can't do it. And given how often other GMs have completely botched a rebuild, I'm not sure I'm convinced there will be a bette qualified guy available when that day comes.

It is worth noting that there were people who felt a full rebuild was needed if we weren't going all in on the Backes core. There were a lot of people who felt that Petro wasn't a good enough 1D for a Cup team. There were a lot of people saying that it was just too hard to acquire Cup-caliber top 6 centers without top 5-10 picks. When Stastny was moved we were left with a core of Schenn, Tarasenko, Schwartz, Berglund, Sobotka, Steen, Fabbri, Petro, Parayko, J-Bo and Allen. Steen was 34 and on a negative-value contract, Bo was about to turn 35 (and coming off season-ending surgery), Fabbri had just missed the entire season with ACL surgery #2, Berglund had 4 negative-value years left w/ trade protection and Sobotka had 2 years left on a mediocre-value contract. It would have been plenty reasonable to argue for a tear-it-down rebuild at that point and I think a lot of teams would have. As much as I don't like many of the contracts we have given out, I have a hard time saying with certainty that we are going to be more boxed in 3-5 years from now than we were in the spring/summer of 2018. The players are going to "pay back" their HRR debt around the time our bad contracts are starting to look really bad. The cap is going to see massive increases over a 2-3 year window when the HRR split returns to 50/50 and there is a real chance that the money flooded into the system makes it possible to move 1-2 of those contracts (while simultaneously making our remaining dead cap easier to stomach). If I had to bet, I would say that a full rebuild will be needed at some point. But I wouldn't bet any money I couldn't afford to lose. Again, I fully disagree that Army has chosen some poor guys to give long term deals to. I just don't think that those bad deals ensure a full tear it down rebuild vs a substantial retool.



Fully disagree about Petro. He had a NTC that he had no incentive to waive. His agency is well known for maximizing his client's value and staying in STL in 2019/20 was absolutely the way to do that. Moreover, we were in a Cup defense, we were the best team in the West and he put up an incredible season. That is absolutely the time to push your chips in rather than selling for the future. Given Petro's ability to fully control the trade destination (or refuse a trade outright) and our status as genuine contenders, trading Petro instead of letting him walk as a UFA is nothing but a fantasy.

I also have zero problem not selling last year. Schwartz's value was as low as ever. He missed 5 weeks with injury and then put up 5 points in 12 games in between his return and the deadline. 14 points in 26 games overall for the season and he had a 15 team no trade list. Given what we know about how hard this season was on him, I'd wager that he had the vast majority of potential destinations interested in a rental on that list. His performance and ability to limit the market almost certainly reduced his value to a mid-low 2nd. Berube destroyed Hoffman's value as much as possible, keeping him on the 2nd PP unit until literally the 1st game after the trade deadline had passed. The only rentals who fetched a 1st were Foligno and Savard, both of which almost certainly had more value than a guy who had been available as a UFA a few months earlier and then floundered somewhat in St. Louis. Both of them went to teams who were willing to go all in and didn't need scoring at the expense of D (Tampa and Toronto). Look at the returns of some of the other guys who moved at the deadline. I really, really don't think we were getting anything more than a couple mid-late 2nds had we moved those 2 guys. Even assuming that standing pat was not influenced by a need for revenue, I don't think the asset return for selling at the deadline last year was high enough to wave a white flag to the locker room and the fans. Trading Bozak very likely means that he isn't coming back on the massively team-friendly contract we got him for and trading Dunn means that we're losing someone else to Seattle. I get the argument to sell last year, but I don't think selling would have been the way to go and I certainly don't think it is predictive that Army won't appropriately recognize the need to rebuild and/or properly handle that rebuild.

Good point about Pietrangelo. I was not thinking about the NTC. I didn't want to trade him until after the fact, because the stories I heard after the fact made it seem like Armstrong didn't think we could sign him (eg stories about when negotiations started). So I didn't need to confront the realities of if it was possible. It was more of a visceral reaction to not signing him.

As to the people who thought he wasn't a good enough 1D, who cares? They were wrong. And I could be wrong about Armstrong not being the right guy for a rebuild, or even us eventually needing a rebuild. But those two things have nothing to do with each other. Pietrangelo was a #1D, and we had the younger pieces outside the Backes core to build around. Armstrong didn't have to go get a #1D or build a younger core. We had Tarasenko, Schwartz, Pietrangelo. Also, we shed the Backes core slowly, so we were able to stay competitive the entire time by retooling on the fly. We never had to rebuild. I see an eventually rebuild coming. I may be wrong, and Armstrong may be able to shed and re-tool on the fly. I hope so. Again, that is why I want to give him a few years to see what he does.

Armstrong is willing to shed assets, he just is unwilling to do it wholesale. As to Shattenkirk, that is an example of how he botched sacrificing the now for the future. He knew 2 years before Shattenkirk was a UFA that he had no future in St. Louis. He was expendable with Parayko coming up and he wanted to go to NY. Yet we waited until the trade deadline of his final year and got a lesser return out of him. We ended up with one of those picks you say don't amount to anything and a "meh" 3rd liner who was close to being NHL ready. That's not exactly a win.

As to the having it both ways, you are a lawyer. Layering multiple legal theories is just how we are trained to think. "My client did not kill his wife, and if you find he did kill her, then it was self defense." I know you are a prosecutor, but they still teach you that in law school. I read it as "The prospects we traded wouldn't have amounted to anything, but even if they did, we got better players". And I agree with that. I just wish we had added more prospects along the way, or hit better on the ones we did draft. So maybe saying you were having it both ways was unfair as it was just layering arguments, but exaggeration of the strength of your case is also lawyer 101

A few teams ahead of us do not have top 10 picks driving their prospect pool. I skimmed through the write-ups on a few lists looking for top 10 prospects. The Panthers have Tippett who was drafted at 10, but otherwise are all outside. He isn't a top 3 prospect for them either. So they would still be higher than us without him. Wild have Rossi @ 9, and again he is not a top 3 prospect for them. They have Wallstedt @ 20 and Addison at 53 ahead of him. Carolina doesn't have a top 10 pick in most rankings (Pronman defines it totally by age, and counts Svechnikov). They are a top 5-10 prospect pool. I'm sure there are more.

Also, had we traded off Hoffman and Schwartz last year, then missed the playoffs, we would have had a much higher picks. That really was the main thing I wanted. I was rooting against us to make the playoffs for the lottery chance and minimum top 15 pick. I like who we picked, but only because we were right outside a group of better players. We got "possibly" the best of the 3rd tier of players as opposed to someone from that 2nd tier we would have gotten has we missed the playoffs. So even if we got a couple 3rds for those guys, we still would be better off with at least one better prospect.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Most of the writing I do for work has to be edited, re-worked, sourced etc. Legal writing is dense with the added pressure of "you can't just make an off the cuff misstatement to a judge."

The stuff I write here is pretty much stream of consciousness. I'm super familiar with hockey reference, hockeydb, nhl.com and natural stat trick, so most of the "research" is just copy/pasting stuff from those sites. It is a nice change of pace from my job and is usually done on lunch breaks, while I'm waiting on hold with a client or sitting in a virtual waiting room for a webex court appearance. Writing about hockey is a great way to pass the time during slow periods at work. I work a desk job with a computer, so I'm typing on a real keyboard and not a phone.

Brevity takes time and effort. I can bang out a long, rambly, and repetitive post pretty quick.

I would have written less, but I didn’t have time.

 

[Bye Bye Blueston]

Good point about Pietrangelo. I was not thinking about the NTC. I didn't want to trade him until after the fact, because the stories I heard after the fact made it seem like Armstrong didn't think we could sign him (eg stories about when negotiations started). So I didn't need to confront the realities of if it was possible. It was more of a visceral reaction to not signing him.

As to the people who thought he wasn't a good enough 1D, who cares? They were wrong. And I could be wrong about Armstrong not being the right guy for a rebuild, or even us eventually needing a rebuild. But those two things have nothing to do with each other. Pietrangelo was a #1D, and we had the younger pieces outside the Backes core to build around. Armstrong didn't have to go get a #1D or build a younger core. We had Tarasenko, Schwartz, Pietrangelo. Also, we shed the Backes core slowly, so we were able to stay competitive the entire time by retooling on the fly. We never had to rebuild. I see an eventually rebuild coming. I may be wrong, and Armstrong may be able to shed and re-tool on the fly. I hope so. Again, that is why I want to give him a few years to see what he does.

Armstrong is willing to shed assets, he just is unwilling to do it wholesale. As to Shattenkirk, that is an example of how he botched sacrificing the now for the future. He knew 2 years before Shattenkirk was a UFA that he had no future in St. Louis. He was expendable with Parayko coming up and he wanted to go to NY. Yet we waited until the trade deadline of his final year and got a lesser return out of him. We ended up with one of those picks you say don't amount to anything and a "meh" 3rd liner who was close to being NHL ready. That's not exactly a win.

As to the having it both ways, you are a lawyer. Layering multiple legal theories is just how we are trained to think. "My client did not kill his wife, and if you find he did kill her, then it was self defense." I know you are a prosecutor, but they still teach you that in law school. I read it as "The prospects we traded wouldn't have amounted to anything, but even if they did, we got better players". And I agree with that. I just wish we had added more prospects along the way, or hit better on the ones we did draft. So maybe saying you were having it both ways was unfair as it was just layering arguments, but exaggeration of the strength of your case is also lawyer 101

A few teams ahead of us do not have top 10 picks driving their prospect pool. I skimmed through the write-ups on a few lists looking for top 10 prospects. The Panthers have Tippett who was drafted at 10, but otherwise are all outside. He isn't a top 3 prospect for them either. So they would still be higher than us without him. Wild have Rossi @ 9, and again he is not a top 3 prospect for them. They have Wallstedt @ 20 and Addison at 53 ahead of him. Carolina doesn't have a top 10 pick in most rankings (Pronman defines it totally by age, and counts Svechnikov). They are a top 5-10 prospect pool. I'm sure there are more.

Also, had we traded off Hoffman and Schwartz last year, then missed the playoffs, we would have had a much higher picks. That really was the main thing I wanted. I was rooting against us to make the playoffs for the lottery chance and minimum top 15 pick. I like who we picked, but only because we were right outside a group of better players. We got "possibly" the best of the 3rd tier of players as opposed to someone from that 2nd tier we would have gotten has we missed the playoffs. So even if we got a couple 3rds for those guys, we still would be better off with at least one better prospect.

Army had worked out multiple deals for Shattenkirk (Tampa and Edmonton were reported) that were nixed because he refused to sign extension. It's not like he just woke up night before deadline and realized he better trade him before he walked.