Good post. I appreciate your optimism, but I am going to have to agree to disagree with you. This is a good roster, but not as good as the SC team. I think we might disagree on how significant the loss of Bouwmeester has impacted the team. I also don't think that our current defense is any better offensively than the SC one. Our forward group definitely has improved, although really think the role that Maroon played, especially in the playoffs, has not been replaced and is missed. Good discussion, nonetheless!
Injury Report: Blues 2020-21 Injury Report
- Thread starter Ranksu
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stl76
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Not sure if it's related to activating Vova...maybe just a move to bank more cap space...but the Blues put Paryako on IR according to JR
Is there a reason they might do this other than Parayko's injury is worse than we hoped?
Is there a reason they might do this other than Parayko's injury is worse than we hoped?
Barbashev, Bozak, Gunnarsson, Parayko, Schwartz, +Sundqvist, Tarasenko, Thomas. One off the list, one on the list.
He’s been gone long enough could bring him back at anytime. Presumably we did it so Tarasenko could have his roster spot.
CaliforniaBlues310
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Beauterham
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And Perunovich. If he would've stayed healthy, he'd undoubtly gotten a few games here and there.
Vincenzo Arelliti
He Can't Play Center
Brian39
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Montreal and Florida deserve to be at least in your 2nd group and arguably in the final group. Maybe they regress, but both of those blue lines have been squarely top 10 this year. Both might be top 5. They have both been fantastic and while you can argue that our blueline is constructed better, we have not played nearly to the level they have this year.
Montreal is 1st in the league in xGA per 60 (5on5) , 2nd in actual GA per 60 (5on5) and top 10 in just about every defensive metric. The only metric where they fall outside top 10 is raw GA per game and PK%. Which is understandable with Carey Price sporting an .898 and still starting the majority of their games. Petry is 2nd among D men in goals, points, and +/- this season. He leads the team in scoring, so it is pretty safe to say that the blue line is dragging that team along this season. Weber has 10 points, which is 1 shy of Faulk.
Florida has been amazing defensively this year 3rd in xGA per 60 (5on5), 7th in actual GA per 60 (5on5), 1st in high danger chances against (5on5) and are top 10 in pretty much everything. Like Montreal, their only area of struggle defensively is on the PK. Lo and behold their starter is sporting a .900. Ekblad leads NHL D men in goals and is 12th in points. Yandle is at 16 points, which puts both guys ahead of Krug on the scoresheet. Weeger also has 11 points and is proving that his 30+ point pace performance as a legit top 4 D man last year was no fluke.
We are 9th in xGA per 60 (5on5), 19th in actual GA per 60 (5on5), and 13th in high danger chances against per 60 (5on5). Overall, we are 22nd in the NHL in GA per game and the PK is 25th. Binner's .908 is noticeably better than Price/Bob's so it is tough to write off our poor PK number as the goalie not being able to make a save.
Montreal and Florida's blue lines are contributing to the offense as much or more than ours and they are defending a hell of a lot better. I think Parayko returning at 100% fixes a lot of our issues, but we aren't on par with these two teams unless he comes back looking like the top 20 NHL-Dman has been in the past.
I ultimately agree with you that we are in that our D is in or near the top-10 when healthy and I think our numbers being below average are largely due to Parayko playing well below 100% (and now on IR). However, the on-ice results haven't been great so far. The Krug-Faulk pairing has been way better than I expected, although they seem to be regressing to the mean a bit right now (which still leaves them squarely as an above average top pair). Dunn/Bortz have good underlying numbers together but haven't translated that to actual results yet. Scandella/Dunn have been okay, Mikkola is getting caved in regardless of who he plays with and we'll see what Scandella/Parayko are long term.
Edit: I have watched a lot of Florida this year because I have chosen Driedger as my yearly fantasy pick for "goalie I think will outplay the established starter." They rarely play at the same time as the Blues, so I have watched a good chunk of their games. The stats above were sought out in support of my eye test, not just because they look good on natural stat trick. Same thing to a lesser degree with Montreal. I always end up watching them a decent amount because Price is otherworldly when he is on his game. The additions of Eddy and Allen have made it even easier to root for them this year too.
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Brian39
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It really doesn't. They have no incentive to put him on LTIR right now. There is no reason to use LTIR other than freeing up cap space and you free up more cap space when you place a guy on LTIR while your roster is as close to their cap ceiling number as possible. Putting him on LTIR now would give us less cap relief than if we do it in the future. Even if we know with 100% certainty that he is out for the rest of the season, we shouldn't put him on LTIR until we have more certainty on Bozak/Barby and/or have acquired a replacement.
Brian39
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I'll be stunned if that doesn't require a 3+ month long recovery. That shoulder is very obviously dislocated and there is no way you don't operate to fix that with a history of injury to that shoulder. Unbelievable.
Vincenzo Arelliti
He Can't Play Center
I would completely agree about Florida, but Montreal being in the North Division gives me some hesitancy -- tons of players in that division are getting career years.
I suppose I should say that I'm speaking mostly about construction, as no one, including DA has the ability to see what this season would hold. As constructed, which is all DA has control over, this team is easily nearing a top-10 defense. The drop from Top-3 to Top-10 isn't as damning as some would claim, and I also think that if we go one-by-one and compare our defense around the league, many posters that are worried about it would be surprised at how good it actually is. We truly were spoiled with Pietrangelo-Parayko-Bouwmeeter as our top-3, and I think that has led us to underestimate just how good Parayko-Faulk-Krug is as a top-3, despite our previous group being better.
Brian39
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I think Montreal doing it in the North is more impressive. That division has been wide-open hockey with players putting up career years offensively. The division inflates Petry's offensive numbers, but Montreal posting league-best defensive metrics in that division is all the more impressive. Toronto is without question a top 5 offense in the league. Vancouver was a top 10 offense last year and Edmonton/Calgary were 15th/20th last year. The North isn't just higher scoring due to a lack of defense, it is higher scoring because there are some very good offensive players. 7 of the league's top 20 goal scorers last year came from Canadian teams and that was with the old schedule structure.
I think Montreal being so good in an offense-heavy division is a point in their favor, not something that discredits their D.
Ted Hoffman
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If you're marking up Thomas [which I'd agree with] I think you have to mark down Tarasenko until he shows he's 100%. Hoffman is an offensive upgrade on Maroon, he's a defensive downgrade. Plus, Maroon played that grinding, checking role that was so effective for us. So did Steen, and we all recognize his PK value. To me, Blais is a wash on Sanford unless you're getting the version of Sanford that's fully interested and engaged ... which, you get about half the time, which is why it's a wash.
Did we majorly upgrade? No, not even close. Is it better? Offensively, probably. Defensively, there's a decent argument for no. In total? Perhaps, but I'd argue it's a wash.
Ted Hoffman
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Whether we've got a top-3 or "only" top-10 defense isn't as critical for me as asking the simple question: is this defense good enough to win 16 playoff games? Right now, hell no. If completely healthy, ... maybe? I think it's a push, and it relies on everyone being completely healthy (swapping Mikkola for Gunnarsson) and not having to tap into depth that doesn't exist.
Vincenzo Arelliti
He Can't Play Center
I haven't looked closely at the numbers, but my thought was that MTL's defensemen were feasting on the poor defense of the division, and that while their defense was playing very well against the McDavid's, etc. of the world, the lack of talent up and down the lineup for most of the North Division teams inflated MTL's defensive stats. It's easy to run the table against Edmonton when McDavid isn't on the ice. So while their possession numbers are good, they're inflated because of the weaker overall competition down the lineup. that said, I don't think MTL's defense is bad -- just not as good as ours.
Regardless, I'm mostly speaking to construction; making the choice to drop from Top-3 to Top-10 in defense while increasing our forward ranking is not as big of a loss at second glance.
In reference to @Ted Hoffman, again, I'm speaking about construction. Tarasenko's health doesn't have much to do with the main point: DA didn't construct a roster that is significantly worse than the Cup roster, despite losing Steen and Bouwmeester unexpectedly. I think this roster is similar to the Cup roster, and actually has the potential to be better. Both are incredibly deep, but I think the forward depth of this roster makes up for the slight drop in defensive depth, again, speaking to the construction. Krug having a rough time adjusting, Tarasenko recovering from injury, Sanford's ability to suck, etc. are all valid points, but isn't exactly what I'm arguing.
Edit: I do think this defense can win a cup. Look no further than PIT or WSH a few years ago. I don't think COL or VGK have a drastically better defense than the Blues, and I might still take ours over theirs (this year). TBL is another story, as is CAR.
tl;dr: As bad as the loss of Pietrangelo and company is (and IT IS), we actually have a pretty comparable team to our cup run.
Ted Hoffman
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If you're going with roster construction, you are completely overblowing Blais on that '19 roster. He had 32 regular season games and was 2-2-4. At best he was on the 3rd line with Bozak. If you want to go by ATOI the only guys behind him in that postseason were Sanford and Fabbri and the only forward to put up fewer points was Fabbri. [Sanford had 1-3-4 in 8 GP to the 1-2-3 in 15 GP from Blais.] If you're putting someone up there on 2LW with ROR and Perron for that '19 squad, it's Sanford who logged almost 2x as many games and posted 8-12-20, and then '19 Sanford = '21 Sanford regardless of where you put him on either team. So really, you have
Hoffman > Maroon
Kyrou > Steen
Thomas = Thomas, except you have him as a 4RW behind Kyrou while Bozak would be a 3C. Um ... no. Preseason expectations from the coaching staff had Thomas taking a top-6 spot out of camp. Probably flip-flop Sanford and Thomas on your '21 roster.
Which is why I say: offensively is the '21 team better than the '19 team? Sure. Defensively? Nope. Total? I'd argue it's probably a wash.
'19 team won the ****ing Cup. A wash is good...if they can get healthy.
Ted Hoffman
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Wash at forward. Defense is a bigger deal. I think it's pretty easy to argue we're not as good there.
God love what Faulk has done so far, he still doesn't replace Pietrangelo. No, I don't want to hear about how bad Pietrangelo is this year; we're comparing back to Pietrangelo from '19. Besides, he sucks and Vegas is still 16-4-1. They've figured out how to soar in spite of him; were he here and being craptastic, we'd have to do the same.
Parayko + Dunn + Bortuzzo = Parayko + Dunn + Bortuzzo
Scandella might replace Bouwmeester. IMO, he probably does. Not better, but equals.
Even at 100% Gunnarsson now isn't the Gunnarsson of 2 years ago.
So .. Krug > Edmunson? That still doesn't make up for Pietrangelo > Faulk.
Then remember that in the playoffs that year, we didn't have to tap Del Zotto or Butler for depth. At 100% Mikkola would be the 8 (good) but then it would step down to Perunovich, Walman, and Santini (not good).
Again, that's all healthy. Right now? We're not. Don't count on Parayko until you hear otherwise. Same for Bozak with PCS. Kind of same with Schwartz, but I expect him back at some point. So, we're down Parayko and Bozak. The former is a massive loss, we've got nothing to fill it and even when he comes back, you can bet Parayko '21 < Parayko '19. Is Mikkola > Gunnarsson? TBD. Faulk still < Pietrangelo. Thomas might fill Bozak's spot. [I hope to hell he does.]
And the real key on this is how those pieces mesh together. That's our problem at the moment. We have better pieces on paper, even when healthy they hadn't meshed completely. They're going to have to do that better than we saw previously.
We're giddy because we've been getting points recently. Not against the Golden Knights, Wild or Avalanche. Against the Ducks, Sharks and Kings. We get a reality check in a few days when 21 of the remaining 30 get played against the other teams in the top-4. It really starts in 2 weeks when it's 19 of the final 24. It's going to be playoff-style hockey for almost 7 weeks. We're going to figure out where we really stack up and a lot of questions are going to get answered in there.
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CaliforniaBlues310
Registered User
Sunny back on the ice today per Twitter.
Kyrou-O’Reilly-Tarasenko
Hoffman-Schenn-Perron
Sanford-Sundqvist-Blais
Clifford-Joshua-MacEachern
Walker
Krug-Faulk
Dunn-Scandella
Mikkola-Bortuzzo
Walman
Schwartz also skated before practice.
Kyrou-O’Reilly-Tarasenko
Hoffman-Schenn-Perron
Sanford-Sundqvist-Blais
Clifford-Joshua-MacEachern
Walker
Krug-Faulk
Dunn-Scandella
Mikkola-Bortuzzo
Walman
Schwartz also skated before practice.
