Just think about how great the Islanders defence will be next season after a whole year of Chara rubbing off on them.
Speculation: Caps Roster General Discussion (Coaching/FAs/Cap/Lines etc) - 2022-23 Season Part 1: Free Agent Edition
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CapitalsCupReality
It’s Go Time!!
- Feb 27, 2002
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CapitalsCupReality
It’s Go Time!!
- Feb 27, 2002
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Definitely NOT overlooked. Him playing up to his potential….was there a player who improved more last season?
twabby
Registered User
- Mar 9, 2010
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I think Kuznetsov was much less impactful at even strength last year than he was the year before (both offensively and defensively), though his contributions on both special teams were better. He was still far better than the Rierden years, but he isn't where he was under Trotz. He's a low-end 1C across the league, which is fine for his price point.
While I think the Strome acquisition was pretty savvy I think they are still going to have some of the weaker top 6 centers overall compared to other contenders. Tough to get a high-end 1C in free agency/via trade, so they'll likely have to make do with what they have.
While I think the Strome acquisition was pretty savvy I think they are still going to have some of the weaker top 6 centers overall compared to other contenders. Tough to get a high-end 1C in free agency/via trade, so they'll likely have to make do with what they have.
Langway
In den Wolken
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Some promising Fehervary playoffs analytics even if the outcomes weren't great and it was a SSS. I did think Jensen struggled to the point where extending him needs to come at the right price points. I'm not sure we should expect this past regular season to be the norm for him. He'll be 32 before next season starts so term could be problematic as well. What's the max offer? 4x4.5? With Orlov due a raise, TVR perhaps a thriftier alternative and Iorio/Chesley on the way you wonder if he won't get pinched.
In that article, Fehervary was given an honourable mention.
"58 targets, gave up entries with possession on 34.5 percent of them, forced turnovers 19 percent of the time"
Compare that to someone like Ben Chiarot, who somehow returned a 1st rd pick and got a fat contract this offseason, in the "open door" section
"67 targets, gave up entries with possession on 68.7 percent of them, forced turnovers 6 percent of the time"
Also can't help but notice that Pittsburgh traded away their two brick walls!
"58 targets, gave up entries with possession on 34.5 percent of them, forced turnovers 19 percent of the time"
Compare that to someone like Ben Chiarot, who somehow returned a 1st rd pick and got a fat contract this offseason, in the "open door" section
"67 targets, gave up entries with possession on 68.7 percent of them, forced turnovers 6 percent of the time"
Also can't help but notice that Pittsburgh traded away their two brick walls!
So this is not on you, just summing it up on everything.
- one of the weakest 1Cs in Kuznetsov
- no second line center
- mediocre rookie in first D pairing
- Carlson is baaaaaad, especially in poffs
- TVR is low key nr6
- Schultz sucked
- Eller shouldnt be here
- Fourth line shouldnt smell the minutes they are playing
- both our goalies sucked last year, and Kuemper likely wont help enough
- all our coaches are basically idiots who dont understand anything about the game
- oshie, mantha cant stay healthy
- strome wont help
- Hagelin getting injured was the best thing happening for the organization since Jagr left
- our prospect pool sucks but should still play in NHL for developemental reasons
- Willy is neutered and half as useful as before
- generally just too old for hockey
- every player whos left DC since the cup was a huge mistake to let go
- Ovie is liability to his team ES, and as PP sucks…..
- didnt we say our goodbyes for Johansson like 10 years ago huh?
- Matt Irwin
- Backys wedding wasnt that cool, they didnt even have dancing bears.
Did i miss something?
Day by day Im more amazed we made it to the playoffs last year!!
twabby
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So this is not on you, just summing it up on everything.
- one of the weakest 1Cs in Kuznetsov yes
- no second line center not a good one at least
- mediocre rookie in first D pairing yes
- Carlson is baaaaaad, especially in poffs Carlson is very good in the regular season, and bad in the playoffs
- TVR is low key nr6 I don't know what this means, but he was an excellent third pairing defenseman
- Schultz sucked yes, for his contract
- Eller shouldnt be here probably
- Fourth line shouldnt smell the minutes they are playing no, I think their minutes were fine except for Hagelin. Dowd and Hathaway have been very good.
- both our goalies sucked last year, and Kuemper likely wont help enough The goalies were mediocre and bad respectively. I think Kuemper could help a lot if he plays the way he has over the past 3-5 years.
- all our coaches are basically idiots who dont understand anything about the game No, I think they make some bad decisions at times
- oshie, mantha cant stay healthy Oshie yes, Mantha I don't know
- strome wont help Strome will help IMO
- Hagelin getting injured was the best thing happening for the organization since Jagr left no
- our prospect pool sucks but should still play in NHL for developemental reasons a few prospects should play over their overpriced veteran counterparts. e.g. I would play McMichael and AJF over Eller and Hagelin
- Willy is neutered and half as useful as before Wilson isn't neutered, he's better now that he has been in the past. All I know is that he didn't get suspended last year and that's very good!
- generally just too old for hockey no
- every player whos left DC since the cup was a huge mistake to let go no
- Ovie is liability to his team ES, and as PP sucks….. no
- didnt we say our goodbyes for Johansson like 10 years ago huh? you can check out of Mojo, but you can never leave him
- Matt Irwin
- Backys wedding wasnt that cool, they didnt even have dancing bears. every wedding is cool provided that you're not the one planning it
Did i miss something?
Day by day Im more amazed we made it to the playoffs last year!!
I don't want to quote a billion things, so I'll just write my comments in the above quote in bold. I know they're not all directed toward me but I wanted to address them all because it's fun.
In general, Washington's biggest strengths were:
-The blueline in general: Carlson, Orlov, Jensen, and TVR are 4 legit top 4 players IMO. Carlson, Orlov, and Jensen are all legit top pairing players IMO. Schultz is fine on the third pairing, and Fehervary wasn't the utter disaster that will cripple a team. He’s just not a top 4 player.
-They have good wingers. Ovechkin, Wilson, Mantha, Oshie, Sheary, Hathaway are all pretty good to great for the roles they are in. Aside from Hagelin none of the wingers really hurt the team.
-Their depth players are very good, even when compared to legit contenders.
Their top-end forwards are just not as good as other top-end forwards around the league. It's a tough puzzle to solve because top-end centers in particular aren't always available. So making optimal moves elsewhere in the lineup is even more important. Edmonton, for example, doesn't need to be as good building around McDavid and Draisaitl as Washington needs to be building around Ovechkin, or Pittsburgh needs to be building around Crosby and Malkin.
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Corby78
65 - 10 - 20
Misery74
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- Nov 20, 2017
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I think that over a few seasons now the team has been exactly the sum of it's parts. The good is there, the bad is there. Before the season starts they project as a playoff team, likely first round exit. By the time the season ends, that's exactly what happens.
Better goaltending should make a difference. Strome, I'm a little hesitant on. Seems like the exact opposite of Laviolette type player.
Jags
Mildly Disturbed
Absolutely. Given the chance they had this offseason to greatly reshape the team, if we don't see real results it's Laviolette and MacLellan that should bear the brunt of the criticism.
Hivemind
We're Touched
Not going to respond to the bulk of your post since I believe @traparatus and @twabby have already done a great job at breaking down and/or lampooning this appeal to authority arguments, but this particular blurb seems pretty obviously aimed at me.
You're not looking at the whole picture of my frustrations with the Samsonov blunders (and I'm using plural here for a reason). If you want to zoom out to simple logic, let's truly zoom out to simple logic. 2015 was GMBM's first draft in which the draft board was fully prepared by him as the GM, with his freshly promoted AGM/former head scout (he inhereted the GM position not long before the 2014 draft, and its reasonable to think GMGM's fingerprints were still on that draft in many ways). So that essentially makes Ilya Samsonov GMBM's first true draft pick. Yet here we are some years later, and we've lost that former 22nd overall pick as a potential RFA for no return. At this 5000 ft angle, it's hard to argue anything other than that's a detriment to the franchise.
We can zoom in a fair bit and argue over circumstance X vs. setting Y vs. timeline Z as to why GMBM lost Sammy for nothing. But it's not *just* about that final stretch in which he failed to secure a trade partner for Samsonov. The writing was on the our goaltending tandem's wall for much much longer than that (dating at least back to the 2021 off-season - where he opted to go cheap on goalies and bring back the same tandem). It's also about being backed into that corner in the first place.
This makes me think of an analogy to an old comment Bruce Boudreau made at a Capitals fan fest sometime around 2011 or 2012. Bruce was discussing possession stats at the time, and made a comment decrying them along the lines of "these possession metrics are bad [he was more elegant than that] because they think dump-ins are bad, yet dump-ins are often the correct play after a player gets pinned in his own zone for a while and needs to get the puck up-ice so his linemates can make a change." Bruce is right about the second half of that statement, that dump-ins can be the correct play in that situation. But Bruce was missing the true logic as to why analytics view that situation negatively. It's not that the player chose to dump-in the puck there that he's penelized analytically, it's the fact that the player was pinned in their own zone for so long in the first place leading to a situation where dump-ins are then required. If you don't get pinned in your own zone in the first place, and thus can make a more meaningful play in the neutral zone with the puck before your linemates are dog tired, then analytics will reward you more. The same situation and logic applies here. If GMBM didn't allow himself to get backed into a corner in which he was up against (a self imposed) time crunch of trying to find value for Samsonov between the draft and Sammy's QO date, he would have had more options. Don't get into that situation in the first place, and you can experience better results. This is why it matters that it was patently obvious the Capitals goalie tandem wasn't going to succeed for such a long time before this scenario.
There's also a conversation to be had about the Capitals/GMBM's approach to arbitration, but I don't feel like going over that yet again.
Finally, I don't think GMBM is a "mucking foron" or that he didn't try. Nor do I think any reasonable poster thinks that. But that doesn't mean he's not without mistakes. And, moreover, it's because we know he can do better that it makes the missteps like these that much more obvious and annoying. It's like when a schoolkid who you know is capable of a good grade brings home a C-. We've seen GMBM fleece other GMs before. We've seen him turn Troy Brouwer into TJ Oshie. We've seen him turn Madison Bowey into Nick Jensen. Hell, even on the topic of goalies, while I don't like that he went with Vanecek/Samsonov for 2021-22, he even exploited the dumbassery of Ron Francis to net a 2nd round pick off of him after Francis didn't pick Brendan Dillon. He's exploited other GMs mistakes and bad scenarios before. And we'd like to see him continue to do that in the future. So it makes it that much more frustrating when he ends up getting exploited or backed into corners instead.
Edit - one final comment, which plays both specifically to this situation but also to these particular appeal to authority arguments as well. The abscence of evidence is not the evidence of abscence. Just because "we don't know" something doesn't mean that that something doesn't or didn't exist.
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I wouldnt put every pick that didnt pan out on GM. BM gives a lot of confidence (as did McPhee) for his scouting staff. As should they.
And to be fair, Samsonov was highly thought and seen as a future franchise goalie. They took calculated risk and used the pick on upside and cant blame them for that on the 22 overall. However looking back does give us something to fringe over. Next picks was Boeser and Konecny, and for the next fifteen or so there was Aho, Beauvillier and Carlo. But also some heavy misses on that range so thats the way it goes. What if-game works for every draft.
It does suck we missed on the ’15 as it was crazy good for top60. But It could have been worse too, like if we had the picks 13-14-15 and used those on Zboril, DeBrusk and Zenyschyn
Never use your first on goalie though.. too much voodoo. Im not even suprised if Sammy wins three Vezinas in a row from now on..
I was more down on moving up in ’14 to pick Vanecek on the 2nd round. I was all in for Brayden Point, who ended up sliding all the way to later 3rd round. The one i was right about back when i was more interested on the prospects and drafting. If we wanted a goalie then and failed to move up so someone picks Vanecek before our turn we could have ended up with Shesterkin (4th round) or Sorokin (3rd round), Merzlikins (3rd round), Husso (4th round) or Kahkonen (4th round) aswell, which would propably made an domino effect where we dont use our 15’ 1st for Samsonov and take Boeser instead. 14 was superb heavy on goalie gems for mid round picks, ans we missed ours to trade up early for the wrong guy (with all respect for Vanecek, who made it here too). Its fun to retro, but useless too we could have Shesterkin, Point and Boeser instead of Samsonov (gone), Vanecek (gone) and Nathan Walker (gone)!!!!
And to be fair, Samsonov was highly thought and seen as a future franchise goalie. They took calculated risk and used the pick on upside and cant blame them for that on the 22 overall. However looking back does give us something to fringe over. Next picks was Boeser and Konecny, and for the next fifteen or so there was Aho, Beauvillier and Carlo. But also some heavy misses on that range so thats the way it goes. What if-game works for every draft.
It does suck we missed on the ’15 as it was crazy good for top60. But It could have been worse too, like if we had the picks 13-14-15 and used those on Zboril, DeBrusk and Zenyschyn
Never use your first on goalie though.. too much voodoo. Im not even suprised if Sammy wins three Vezinas in a row from now on..
I was more down on moving up in ’14 to pick Vanecek on the 2nd round. I was all in for Brayden Point, who ended up sliding all the way to later 3rd round. The one i was right about back when i was more interested on the prospects and drafting. If we wanted a goalie then and failed to move up so someone picks Vanecek before our turn we could have ended up with Shesterkin (4th round) or Sorokin (3rd round), Merzlikins (3rd round), Husso (4th round) or Kahkonen (4th round) aswell, which would propably made an domino effect where we dont use our 15’ 1st for Samsonov and take Boeser instead. 14 was superb heavy on goalie gems for mid round picks, ans we missed ours to trade up early for the wrong guy (with all respect for Vanecek, who made it here too). Its fun to retro, but useless too
we could have Shesterkin, Point and Boeser instead of Samsonov (gone), Vanecek (gone) and Nathan Walker (gone)!!!!
Jags
Mildly Disturbed
Um, no. Lots of people thought that at the time. The talking heads on TV talked about it, the local blogs wrote at least two articles making that exact statement. If you offered me money, I couldn't have guessed who was arguing that here, if anyone. I've got a thousand posts here in 6 years; I don't spend much time here, certainly not memorizing who said what. And this exact discussion happens several times every year when players of perceived value aren't qualified, so it isn't rare.
Okay, but let's also be honest. No one was offering a king's ransom for Sammy last year. We stuck with them both because they were cheap and we had our fingers crossed that at least one would live up to their potential. It was a cap move. Nothing outside of his draft pedigree was all that attractive about Samsonov. Little flashes of brilliance here and there that every goalie manages to produce in small amounts, but overall his actual play suggested that he'd become an unremarkable prospect.
His value was certainly higher last year, but his worth in a trade versus his cap hit and potential made keeping him justifiable. Then the season started and wore on, his performance was even worse than before, and we arrived at the TDL. One rumor about a non-playoff team being possibly interested. No playoffs, so they weren't desperate. If there even was an offer it was most likely not worth giving up our bird in the hand when we might need him. And the moment we kept him at the TDL, he was pretty much a lock to walk. He was no better than most of the many goalies that were going to be available in free agency.
So they cut bait. They clearly didn't want him, so he wasn't worth the QO or the time wasted in a hot goalie market to bother with any arbitration timetable. If you want to quibble over some guess that he might have yielded a worthwhile pick a year ago, knock yourself out. The questionable value and mights and maybes could just as easily broken the other way. He was a cheap keeper in a contract year that had every reason to buckle down and prove his worth.
It was a risk either way you play it, and I sincerely doubt his trade value in that moment is worth being upset about today. Sure, he was highly touted a half dozen years ago, but he was also the motorbike-wrecking, rule-breaking, COVID-huffing kid with questionable commitment that couldn't seem to get out of his own way. I really don't think anyone was backing up a Brink's truck for him.
Much ado about nothing...
twabby
Registered User
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Strome doesn’t seem like a Laviolette player at first glance but it’s not like they have a bunch of top 6 centers that seem like Laviolette players either. I guess Laviolette could lean on Dowd and Eller even more than he did last year which would be worrisome, but it’s not like Backstrom is going to be in the mix for some time. Strome and/or McMichael are going to get minutes. Hopefully both.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Strome as a player as well. His metrics are good, and defensively I think he’s a bit underrated. Playing with Patrick Kane so much is going to hurt how a player appears defensively. Much like how when Kuznetsov finally got a fair shot from Laviolette he was trusted to play big minutes, I’m hoping the same is true of Strome (but hopefully it doesn’t take a full season before getting this trust like it did for Kuznetsov).
Strome just seems like a great bet at $3.5 million. He’s not going to be as good as JT Miller but Strome is still a highish upside low-risk acquisition.
I agree with what others have said about who the “whipping boy” should be this year. It should be Laviolette. I don’t think this is a top-end Stanley Cup contender but they had a good offseason so far and they really should be able to compete with the Rangers for second in the division. And hopefully win a round or two in the postseason. I feel a lot better about them entering this year than last year.
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twabby
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How defencemen transitioned the puck out of their zone in the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs
Dimitri Filipovic uses tracking data from this year's playoffs to look at which defencemen transition the puck out of their own zone most effectively, and why it's such an important skill in today's game.
eprinkside.com
His tracking data this postseason throughout their six games against the Panthers was certifiably bonkers. He exited his own zone with possession 64.6 percent of the time, which was behind just Makar and Heiskanen. He also gave up entries with possession on just 40.4 percent of the times he was targeted at the other end of the ice, which put him just a few decimal points behind Devon Toews for 10th best amongst all defenders in the sample.
Dmitry Orlov is still really good.
Also another encouraging datapoint for Fehervary as well.
I’d still love to see Fehervary’s regular season numbers. I’d be more encouraged if he showed legitimate improvement in the postseason because it could indicate he turned a corner. But if these numbers were similar to his regular season numbers then it’d be a little more discouraging to me because it would either show these microstats don’t really matter, or that he was so bad in other parts of the game that these good exit numbers just didn’t matter.
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Ben Chiarot, so bad.How defencemen transitioned the puck out of their zone in the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs
Dimitri Filipovic uses tracking data from this year's playoffs to look at which defencemen transition the puck out of their own zone most effectively, and why it's such an important skill in today's game.
Another encouraging datapoint for Fehervary as well.
I’d still love to see Fehervary’s regular season numbers. I’d be more encouraged if he showed legitimate improvement in the postseason because it could indicate he turned a corner. But if these numbers were similar to his regular season numbers then it’d be a little more discouraging to me because it would either show these microstats don’t really matter, or that he was so bad in other parts of the game that these good exit numbers just didn’t matter.
Langway
In den Wolken
- Jul 7, 2006
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Those second Carlson numbers. Eesh. Hard to believe he's fundamentally tenable in his current role for a deep playoff push at this stage. Even if they had more of a Cup run Niskanen type offloading some of the weight I'm not sure it's enough. It's a massive structural issue on top of everything else. Zoom out and it's the top two centers and the top D pair that stand out most in not being sufficient to absorb the opposition's best and tip the scales in their favor. Depth, tactics and experience can win out. Better goaltending can help. But they're really pushing the envelope when it comes to best on best.
Evgeny Oliker
Registered User
Question on Orlov:
With Schultz gone, could Orlov get a bit more PP time?
I know Caps signed Gustafsson but he only had 18 points last season. I would think Orlov is a better PP option…
With Schultz gone, could Orlov get a bit more PP time?
I know Caps signed Gustafsson but he only had 18 points last season. I would think Orlov is a better PP option…
Hivemind
We're Touched
Ehhh. He got some PP time already last year, both at PP2 point and also in Backstroms spot. It’s possible he sees a more consistent PP2 gig this year, but they kept Forsythe and Forsythes formation prefers a RH shot at the top of the formation. Plus PP2 is very sparingly used anyway. I’d expect the team to mostly run a single PP1 unit for 80%+ of the PP time again, and Orlov to get scraps.
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