GDT: Game 50 @ Predators 5pm

[Lebanezer]

Not surprising that you and many others miss this fundamental point: it is the year 2025 and every NHL org has the ability to pull up every single shift of every single player in every single professional or major junior league at the click of a button. They all have RFID data on these players beyond anything we can access in the public domain.

If Gushchin or Bordeleau or [insert prospect you think was failed by Sharks development] is actually good, why haven't other teams tried to trade for them? It's not like they would be expensive to acquire. Could it be, perhaps, that they have simply done nothing at any level to indicate to anyone in the entire industry that they have a future as useful NHL players?

That is not the point and shows that you couldn’t be bothered to read the discussion. You saw the name Gushchin and it triggered you into the same robotic appeal to authority response you always use. You’re not contributing anything of use here. Your opinions are well documented.

 

[ChompChomp]

Sorry, am I to believe there are people here who genuinely think it would be better for the organization if we'd left Smith and Celebrini in college this season?

I'm so sorry, but I just can't believe that could possibly be true. If a guy can hang in the NHL that's almost always the best place for them to be. Celebrini's and Smith's rookie seasons were always going to be tough seasons, postponing it another year just delays the rebuild.

I also just can't possibly believe someone could watch Will Smith (or Celebrini for that matter) over the last few games and suggest that he isn't better than he was game 1 of the season. Possession stats on this dumpster fire of a team are quite literally meaningless. And possession stats for teenagers on bad teams are always, always, ALWAYS in the toilet. No exceptions.

I get the feeling that some people were genuinely expecting this team to be close to the playoffs this season, despite the extensive discussion pre-season about how insane that thought was. The forward core is solid but extremely young. The defense is an absolute TIRE FIRE. The goaltending is awful, Askarov aside. I can't believe we're at game 50 and people still can't understand that this team is not built to win games, it's build to not get blown out of them. We have one single legitimate top-4 defenseman (who is extremely inconsistent), two legitimate #5D, and a bunch of #7 types. You cannot win games with that formula. It's really not that complicated.

Thank you for this post, yet another well said post from you. We all said, going into this season, that this team would be losing games 5-4, 6-5, 7-5, and that's exactly what they're doing! But yet when it actually happens, we get this insane rhetoric like "Smith and Celebrini should still be in college" and that somehow our HC is worse than Quinn and deserving of derogatory nicknames. It's ridiculous and I agree with you, it does reek of people expecting the team to be closer to the playoffs this season, when we all warned against that notion from the jump. Like you, I am getting slightly more generous with the "Ignore" button.

 

[Hodge]

That is not the point and shows that you couldn’t be bothered to read the discussion. You saw the name Gushchin and it triggered you into the same robotic appeal to authority response you always use. You’re not contributing anything of use here. Your opinions are well documented.

I read the discussion. As usual you're whining that Gushchin isn't being gifted a free ride in the top six despite doing absolutely nothing in the NHL or AHL to prove he deserves one. Is he being "put in a position to fail" on the Barracuda as well? If not why has his production regressed dramatically?

Graf crushed the AHL and earned a callup. Shoehorning Gushchin or anyone else into a top six spot on the Sharks isn't magically going to make them a top six forward.

 

[Lebanezer]

I read the discussion. As usual you're whining that Gushchin isn't being gifted a free ride in the top six despite doing absolutely nothing in the NHL or AHL to prove he deserves one. Is he being "put in a position to fail" on the Barracuda as well? If not why has his production regressed dramatically?

Graf crushed in the AHL and earned a callup. Shoehorning Gushchin or anyone else into a top six spot on the Sharks isn't magically going to make them a top six forward.

Nope, still not getting it.

 

[Hodge]

You literally said

he should be given a fair amount of run on the top 2 lines to see if there's anything there. I'd say like 10+ games at least with either Celebrini or Granlund.

when we already know there's nothing there. 12 points in 21 AHL games and you want to give him precious top six ice time ahead of Eklund, Toffoli, Smith or Zetterlund. And not doing so is somehow a failure of Warsofsky and the Sharks org to put Gushchin in a position to succeed. Why isn't the onus on Gushchin to prove he deserves that spot?

Apparently prospects can never fail. They can only be failed by the organization.

 

[BaileyMacTavish]

Thank you for this post, yet another well said post from you. We all said, going into this season, that this team would be losing games 5-4, 6-5, 7-5, and that's exactly what they're doing! But yet when it actually happens, we get this insane rhetoric like "Smith and Celebrini should still be in college" and that somehow our HC is worse than Quinn and deserving of derogatory nicknames. It's ridiculous and I agree with you, it does reek of people expecting the team to be closer to the playoffs this season, when we all warned against that notion from the jump. Like you, I am getting slightly more generous with the "Ignore" button.

I think this season is going as expected but blowing a 5-1 lead is still pretty disheartening lol

 

[mogambomoroo]

I think this season is going as expected but blowing a 5-1 lead is still pretty disheartening lol

To be honest it's quite refreshing that Sharks fans actually care about the wins and losses this season, rather than being full on tank mode. I can't stand another season of not cheering for a win.

 

[Lebanezer]

You literally said

when we already know there's nothing there. 12 points in 21 AHL games and you want to give him precious top six ice time ahead of Eklund, Toffoli, Smith or Zetterlund. And not doing so is somehow a failure of Warsofsky and the Sharks org to put Gushchin in a position to succeed. Why isn't the onus on Gushchin to prove he deserves that spot?

Apparently prospects can never fail. They can only be failed by the organization.

Again, you’re not reading the whole discussion. You are completely fixated on Gushchin. We don’t need to go any further.

 

[Juxtaposer]

To be honest it's quite refreshing that Sharks fans actually care about the wins and losses this season, rather than being full on tank mode. I can't stand another season of not cheering for a win.

Right. To be clear, I have no problem with people being mad about a ridiculous blown lead like that. I was pretty mad myself. And rooting for the team to win is fine too as far as I'm concerned. The issue is that people seem to think that the team is underperforming as a whole, which simply isn't true. This is exactly what I expected.

 

[Dicdonya]

I understand you split the season in half but it misses the point. Smith went pointless his first 14 games then moved to wing had legit top 6 linemates (Granlund) and produced for a few games. He had a maintenance day or minor injury then came back to playing with bottom 6 linemates (Goodrow) and performed horribly for that time. He got benched which he responded with better defensive focus that got him promoted to play again with top 6 linemates (Granlund) and he magically produced again.

This is absolutely coaching. Warsofsky is not blindly playing him with Granlund and has specific details he wants to see from Smith that has nothing to do with points. So he uses ice time and quality of linemates to motivate Smith to focus on those details. Once he showed improvement he promoted him to play with Granlund again.

I know it is easy to just blame the coach and split the season in half to fit a narrative but anyone watching the Smith from the beginning of the season and Smith now can absolutely see improvement in his game.

It’s also more than just producing points that Smith needs for development. If the goal was for Smith to get as many points as possible (like what is happening for Michkov and Hudson) then he would be PP1 and stapled to Granlund. I am thankful that the coaches aren’t just wanting empty points from him and are working on details with him such as picking picks up of the boards or defensive intensity.

If you want to get more clarity on the development of Smith I would recommend reading the article Sheng Peng posted about Smith. It explains a lot of things that stat watching doesn’t.

I appreciate the effort to quantify this. What I'd say for Celebrini is that the stats and the eye test show that his game is maturing. Game 1, he was absolutely a bat out of hell, but totally chaotic and high-event. Some great defensive plays, but also blew a tire on the game losing goal. Some great offensive plays, but also a ton of unnecessary high turnovers leading to rush chances against. He has matured already in just 40 games since then, and he STILL looks young and raw, which is great because it shows there's still a lot of room for improvement. As for Smith, I think that below summarizes it well.

Agreed with pretty much all of it. You can't necessarily see it in the stats, but he has been a more reliable player including getting top line or top 6 minutes and creating chances in them -- I bet if you isolated the last 2-3 games his stats would have a major jump particularly in on-ice xGF, possibly even xGA. But his game to game is highly variable, so an averaging of stats isn't going to tell the whole story. Eye test shows he's volatile but improving, and continuing to show spikes here and there, which is all we really want to see out of a 19yo.

We can play armchair GM all we want with ELCs, but it's bad business to f*** around with talented young player's careers like that. If a player is good enough to develop in the NHL you do it. Development is all about resistance levels. You want the resistance as high as possible as long as the player is maintaining an appropriate level of success. Playing Celebrini and Smith another year in college would have been detrimental to their development.

Do you really think Grier looks at Goodrow and says "I need an entire team of that". Nobody wants to play on the worst team in the NHL (hint hint, that's the Sharks). Grier is doing the best he can with what he has, and like you pointed out, we have to wait and see if some of those later picks hit.

We have no clue if Dickinson, Musty, Mukhamadullin, Chernyshov, Bystedt, Halttunen, Gushchin, Graf, Cagnoni, Pohlkamp, Wallenius, Lund, Svoboda, will hit, but that's a lot of quality lottery tickets. Unfortunately for those of us who are impatient we won't know for another 2/3 years for most of them, which is why I think it's absolutely crazy to be up in arms about blowing a lead in game 50 of another bottom 5 finish season.


This is exactly the mentality I'm talking about. You are expecting a perfectly linear development curve for young players and that's simply not how it works. Saying Celebrini and Smith haven't gotten better is absolutely crazy to me. Smith has cleaned up so many of the little details he struggled with early in the season, and I'm a full believer that if he can add strength and speed as he gets older he has the potential to be a true 2C or even a 1W. Unfortunately for the impatient folks on these boards we won't know if he can make those improvements until he biologically becomes a man. He is a Sophomore for crying out loud. How many Sophomore's in college did you know that had the size/strength/speed of a professional 26 year old?

To be clear, my main aspirations for this year are that Celebrini and Smith both prove they can play at the NHL level. I believe they can from what I've seen so far. From here it's up to them to put the work in over the next few off seasons to add the physical attributes they will need to physically dominate once they are 23/24.

I'm sorry guys, I had written out lengthy responses to each of your posts, but by the time I was done I realized I really do not want to be arguing about Smith and Celebrini. They were never the point I intending to discuss, and they are like 80% of the reason I tune in to the games this year, rooting for them to have good games and play well. If you think they are progressing well then wonderful. If you think Warsofsky is getting the most out of them and is not hurting their development at all then great.

At this point its clear my opinion is the minority, and I learned from the years after the 18-19 season that wasting time trying to argue against the popular opinion is pointless and exhausting so I will stop. Guess we'll see in a few years if Warsofsky was a good or bad coach for the rebuild.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Right. To be clear, I have no problem with people being mad about a ridiculous blown lead like that. I was pretty mad myself. And rooting for the team to win is fine too as far as I'm concerned. The issue is that people seem to think that the team is underperforming as a whole, which simply isn't true. This is exactly what I expected.

Agreed with all this. Once you get past the emotions that come with blowing a lead like that, it's perfectly in line with the sort of season they've been having and what the expectations really ought to be for a team with a rookie head coach developing two top draft picks in their rookie seasons with a garbage blue line. We've been 50-50 at blowing leads we have going into the 3rd period. A mediocre and young team with a young head coach should be expected to have these sorts of issues. Finishing games is tough for a team that has problems starting on time and issues getting double digit shot totals in any given period.