Around the League, 2024-25

[Oddbob]

the Wings paying to get rid of Walman looks worse every game

big minutes and universally positive comments from Sharks fans, even in a blowout loss like tonight all the comments on him are singling him out as having done well in the 20+ all situation minutes he played

It has been 5 games. Everything looks better in such a small sample size. The Sharks are in for an even longer season than the Wings are and he isn't suddenly going to be a perennial top flight guy all of a sudden.

 

[HisNoodliness]

1) Sometimes a player just needs a change of scenery. It's possible that Walman clashed with Detroit but plays well for San Jose.

2) Sample size. Vrana looked really good for a hot minute in St Louis when he left too, but he didn't exactly maintain it. So let's see how far into the season Jake keeps it going.

The Wings need a ton of work on defense. But Walman was never part of the long term answer, so I'm not all that concerned about whether he does anything with the Sharks. I'm skeptical that he couldn't have been unloaded for a cheaper price, but not much I can do about that now.

Personally I'm of the opinion that we should just move on. Walman doing well in San Jose is great for him, and doesn't really matter for us.

My biggest problem is that we have 3 or 4 D that are worse than Walman at everything and we seem perfectly content to keep them around. I bet Walman calls Jeff Petry's Mom to wish her a happy mother's day before Jeff can. That's how universal Walman's superiority is. If we can look at our own players and completely misevaluate their relative hockey playing ability, that is a terrible sign for the future. Couple that with 10% of our UFA signings being good. 20% being okay and the rest being total disasters, and it's just another indication of how terrible our pro scouting is, especially on defense.

 

[jkutswings]

Personally I'm of the opinion that we should just move on. Walman doing well in San Jose is great for him, and doesn't really matter for us.

My biggest problem is that we have 3 or 4 D that are worse than Walman at everything and we seem perfectly content to keep them around. I bet Walman calls Jeff Petry's Mom to wish her a happy mother's day before Jeff can. That's how universal Walman's superiority is. If we can look at our own players and completely misevaluate their relative hockey playing ability, that is a terrible sign for the future. Couple that with 10% of our UFA signings being good. 20% being okay and the rest being total disasters, and it's just another indication of how terrible our pro scouting is, especially on defense.

I'm hopeful that it's for another bad (but much more fixable) reason: that until several kids were ready, there was a mandate to not go over $5M AAV or 4 years on any free agents, so they were left with the Kmart blue light special kinda players to use as Band-Aids.