Management Discussion | You can’t handle the Rebuild!

[Nucker101]

The Canucks are an absolutely dreadful team at 5-on-5. Blaming that on goaltending is bizarre. Great goaltending would definitely improve this team, but that's not the crux of the issue.

This. The fact that this team had to rely on great goaltending last year just to be a mediocre team says it all.


This team relies on a high-end PP, high end goaltending and good finishing ability just to be mediocre.


We're not the Buffalo Sabres right now who have their top player outplaying other teams, but are being held by shoddy depth. Or the Devils who also had their top players outplaying other teams but lacked depth and goaltending.


How many games this year has this team had 2 lines that have clearly outplayed the opposition at 5v5? It's rare.

 

[sting101]

I’m not sure what you mean on that, but I’m willing to give Horvat a pass on pretty much anything. He’s been shit on pretty much the entire time he’s been with the Canucks from fans, management and coaching staff.

He’s done more or less everything expected of him, has forced the team to begrudgingly give him things (do you really think he would’ve been made

wtf does this mean

captain, for example, if he wasn’t literally the only bright spot on the Canucks roster at the time? Have we forgotten about how Benning tried to pigeonhole him in as a checking line center?)

But it’s not good enough. He’s had to bear the brunt of these shitty Canucks teams with very little payoff. If he wants to stay and get fat stacks, cool. If he wants to bolt and join a team that is more competitive, cool.

He’s earned the right to do whatever he wants.

I was responding to the commentary that he is butt hurt by Miller being prioritized and the offers......i dont think Bo is the kind of guy to be a baby over contract negotiations. Pretty much every team starts with the top scorers and works back. Miller came off 99pts.

He even said as much that he is focussed on winning and doesnt want to be a distraction. He has a long history here and if he is deciding to leave its for other reasons IMO.

 

[credulous]

This is a good post and I appreciate your analysis and detail. Ultimately, the crux of the point is what percentage of 25 year old players significantly develop as they enter there 26-30 seasons, or whatever. I have no idea, and you seem to think that its a very low percentage. I assume you have no evidence other than just your observations? For clarity, I expect the percentage would be relatively low.

But I do recognize that your total potential for a 25 year old is probably less than for a pick. So, for example, while you may have a better chance of the 25 year old bottom pairing defensemen turning into a middle pairing defensemen than the 3rd round pick, the third round pick may have a higher chance of turning into a top pairing defensemen. Its interesting though.

what kind of evidence do you want? i didn't do a comprehensive survey of every nhl player in the last 10 years or anything but i went through every team and looked at their current "established" roster. i did this pretty subjectively based on my opinions. i didn't really have a good metric but i guess if you were being more thorough you could go by average ice time or something. then i made a determination as to when they 'made it' as an established nhl non-fringe player. as an example, here's the devils:

jack hughes -- 18
nico hischier -- 18
ondrej palat -- 22 (played his age 20 season in europe)
jesper bratt -- 19
tomas tatar -- 22
miles wood -- 22
erik haula -- 22 (weird path. played junior in finland and then ushl and 3 years of ncaa)
yegor sharangovich -- 21

dougie hamilton -- 19
damon severson -- 21
ryan graves -- 24
jonas siegenthaler -- 24
john marino -- 22

so in this case you have ryan graves and jonas siegenthaler as 'late bloomers' but both had established themselves as regulars by 24. i'm not sure what was going on with graves other than maybe he was blocked by a relatively deep rangers blue line but he established himself quickly once the avs gave him a chance to play. siegenthaler though did legitimately take longer to establish himself than most good players. in part probably because he didn't fit in well with washington's group on defense and in part because he just took longer

you can repeat this kind of analysis for every team and it's very hard to find anyone like ethan bear or travis dermott that had been given opportunity to establish themselves and failed and then turned it around to become a mainstay. like i mentioned the only player i think qualifies unambiguously is mayfield and i'm still not sure he's actually good and not just a product of trotz' system. he's been pretty bad this year but he's also 30 so maybe he's just aging out of the league

it's really hard to do any kind of analysis on something like 'third pairing dman becomes second pairing dman' because those aren't really different things. a second pairing dman isn't just a dman that gets less ice time than the top 2 dmen on the roster and more than the bottom 2 it's also someone that can play those minutes effectively and how do you measure that?

subjectively, i don't really believe players improve much beyond their age 22 or 23 seasons. that's not to say they don't perform better but i mostly think it's a case of being put in better situations or just natural variance in performance. occaisonally you get a guy who finds 'another level' but they were mostly very good to begin with

what does that mean for the moneyballesque 'find undervalued assets' approach to team building in the nhl? look to acquire guys who haven't had opportunity and might thrive in your situation. acquiring guys who have failed to thrive despite being given the chance is almost always a bad bet

 

[arttk]

An offensively oriented roster can be effective as long as it plays a structured system.

Rutherford has won more than one cup with that setup. But if that's the way they wanted to go they should have cut the cord on Boudreau in the summer. It would have been an unpopular move but they could have communicated their vision. Now we are stuck in limbo.

I mean if there is a year to be in limbo, this is the year. We are bottom 8 right now, if we stay or dive lower, it’s not a bad result. Especially considering there are pieces that are not possible to move off of.

End of the day, if they truly cared about competing this year, BB would be gone. There is no f***ing way in hell they would’ve kept a coach they obviously do not like around if they were serious this year. Hell he would’ve been fired like 10, 20 games ago even if he was not sacked in the beginning if this group was actually serious about competing for the playoffs.

 

[Hodgy]

what kind of evidence do you want? i didn't do a comprehensive survey of every nhl player in the last 10 years or anything but i went through every team and looked at their current "established" roster. i did this pretty subjectively based on my opinions. i didn't really have a good metric but i guess if you were being more thorough you could go by average ice time or something. then i made a determination as to when they 'made it' as an established nhl non-fringe player.

I didn't expect you to have any evidence, nor do I expect you to be able to create any. It would take a massive effort to do so and even then there would be limitations as you have noted. My point was that you seemed to make a declaration that 25 year olds basically don't improve, and you seem to reiterate. I don't agree with this although I do agree that the chances of them significantly improving is relatively low. But again, we are talking in the context of chances of a mid round pick hitting that potential vs. the 25 year old so even a relatively low percentage for the 25 year old may be higher than the pick. Would be interested to see if any in-depth analysis has been done on this. I won't dive into the rest of your post as its obviously not meant to be a comprehensive study or even an answer to the question but do appreciate your analysis!

 

[credulous]

I didn't expect you to have any evidence, nor do I expect you to be able to create any. It would take a massive effort to do so and even then there would be limitations as you have noted. My point was that you seemed to make a declaration that 25 year olds basically don't improve, and you seem to reiterate. I don't agree with this although I do agree that the chances of them significantly improving is relatively low. But again, we are talking in the context of chances of a mid round pick hitting that potential vs. the 25 year old so even a relatively low percentage for the 25 year old may be higher than the pick. Would be interested to see if any in-depth analysis has been done on this. I won't dive into the rest of your post as its obviously not meant to be a comprehensive study or even an answer to the question but do appreciate your analysis!

sure okay. i was just explaining my methodology. you're right that this is all subjective but i haven't seen anything to really challenge my conclusions. i didn't go into this trying to prove 25 year olds can't get better i was honestly interested in the 'pro scouting moneyball' approach to roster construction some of the posters here seem to think the canucks should pursue. once you eliminate players like verhaeghe, marchment, bunting, gourde and graves who succeeded almost immediately upon reaching the nhl (even though it took them longer than average to reach the nhl) i wasn't able to find really any examples of players like bear, dermott or studnicka really succeeding by my criteria except the previously mentioned mayfield and maybe ceci

if you have counter examples that challenge my conclusions i'd love to hear them. i'm not ideologically driven here i'm just an amateur wanna be gm who is interested in how winning teams are constructed

 

[4Twenty]

sure okay. i was just explaining my methodology. you're right that this is all subjective but i haven't seen anything to really challenge my conclusions. i didn't go into this trying to prove 25 year olds can't get better i was honestly interested in the 'pro scouting moneyball' approach to roster construction some of the posters here seem to think the canucks should pursue. once you eliminate players like verhaeghe, marchment, bunting, gourde and graves who succeeded almost immediately upon reaching the nhl (even though it took them longer than average to reach the nhl) i wasn't able to find really any examples of players like bear, dermott or studnicka really succeeding by my criteria except the previously mentioned mayfield and maybe ceci

if you have counter examples that challenge my conclusions i'd love to hear them. i'm not ideologically driven here i'm just an amateur wanna be gm who is interested in how winning teams are constructed

I think if you really stretch you can find guys like Devon Toews, Brayden McNabb, and Nate Schmidt could maybe fit. But to me the more common outcome is at 25 these dudes have peaked or lost the shine they had as younger nhl dmen like your Gudbranson’s and Sbisa’s.

Yes @Hodgy I realize the latter came at a significant cost. Just in general. What you see is what you get with these guys at this age.

 

[arttk]

what kind of evidence do you want? i didn't do a comprehensive survey of every nhl player in the last 10 years or anything but i went through every team and looked at their current "established" roster. i did this pretty subjectively based on my opinions. i didn't really have a good metric but i guess if you were being more thorough you could go by average ice time or something. then i made a determination as to when they 'made it' as an established nhl non-fringe player. as an example, here's the devils:

jack hughes -- 18
nico hischier -- 18
ondrej palat -- 22 (played his age 20 season in europe)
jesper bratt -- 19
tomas tatar -- 22
miles wood -- 22
erik haula -- 22 (weird path. played junior in finland and then ushl and 3 years of ncaa)
yegor sharangovich -- 21

dougie hamilton -- 19
damon severson -- 21
ryan graves -- 24
jonas siegenthaler -- 24
john marino -- 22

so in this case you have ryan graves and jonas siegenthaler as 'late bloomers' but both had established themselves as regulars by 24. i'm not sure what was going on with graves other than maybe he was blocked by a relatively deep rangers blue line but he established himself quickly once the avs gave him a chance to play. siegenthaler though did legitimately take longer to establish himself than most good players. in part probably because he didn't fit in well with washington's group on defense and in part because he just took longer

you can repeat this kind of analysis for every team and it's very hard to find anyone like ethan bear or travis dermott that had been given opportunity to establish themselves and failed and then turned it around to become a mainstay. like i mentioned the only player i think qualifies unambiguously is mayfield and i'm still not sure he's actually good and not just a product of trotz' system. he's been pretty bad this year but he's also 30 so maybe he's just aging out of the league

it's really hard to do any kind of analysis on something like 'third pairing dman becomes second pairing dman' because those aren't really different things. a second pairing dman isn't just a dman that gets less ice time than the top 2 dmen on the roster and more than the bottom 2 it's also someone that can play those minutes effectively and how do you measure that?

subjectively, i don't really believe players improve much beyond their age 22 or 23 seasons. that's not to say they don't perform better but i mostly think it's a case of being put in better situations or just natural variance in performance. occaisonally you get a guy who finds 'another level' but they were mostly very good to begin with

what does that mean for the moneyballesque 'find undervalued assets' approach to team building in the nhl? look to acquire guys who haven't had opportunity and might thrive in your situation. acquiring guys who have failed to thrive despite being given the chance is almost always a bad bet

It’s actually not that hard to look into it.
So let’s see the criteria of playing 20+M as a loose proxy for top4 status.

I look through a couple of teams and see outside of the highly rated guys, who got to hypothetical top4 status after 23.

Orlov - 26yrs and 23 min avg
Gustafson - 26yr and 22:35 avg
Forbort - 24yr and 20:07 avg
Matt Roy - 26yr and 20:59 avg
Durzi - 24yr and 20:10 avg
Weegar - 26yr amd 20:07 avg
Rasmus Anderson - 24yr and 21:13avg

So this is like after sampling like 5 teams? Seems pretty damn common to see players stick around on the 3rd pair and then finally make the leap aroind 24-26.

 

[credulous]

I think if you really stretch you can find guys like Devon Toews, Brayden McNabb, and Nate Schmidt could maybe fit. But to me the more common outcome is at 25 these dudes have peaked or lost the shine they had as younger nhl dmen like your Gudbranson’s and Sbisa’s.

Yes @Hodgy I realize the latter came at a significant cost. Just in general. What you see is what you get with these guys at this age.

toews is close but he was in the islanders (very good) top 4 by age 24 and he claimed that spot basically immediately on getting an nhl shot. mcnabb did it by 23 but did fail to claim a regular spot in two extended looks in his age 21 and 22 seasons. schmidt is probably closest as he was an nhl regular at 22 but didn't really establish himself as a top 4 guy until he was 24

i'm not really saying you can't trade for age 25ish players successfully i'm just saying if you trade for guys who are 25 and have been given opportunities to solidify their place in the upper echelons of the nhl and they haven't really done it you're going to be disappointed. there's a massive difference in giving up a 3rd for ryan graves at 24 and giving up a 3rd for travis dermott at 25

 

[MS]

what kind of evidence do you want? i didn't do a comprehensive survey of every nhl player in the last 10 years or anything but i went through every team and looked at their current "established" roster. i did this pretty subjectively based on my opinions. i didn't really have a good metric but i guess if you were being more thorough you could go by average ice time or something. then i made a determination as to when they 'made it' as an established nhl non-fringe player. as an example, here's the devils:

jack hughes -- 18
nico hischier -- 18
ondrej palat -- 22 (played his age 20 season in europe)
jesper bratt -- 19
tomas tatar -- 22
miles wood -- 22
erik haula -- 22 (weird path. played junior in finland and then ushl and 3 years of ncaa)
yegor sharangovich -- 21

dougie hamilton -- 19
damon severson -- 21
ryan graves -- 24
jonas siegenthaler -- 24
john marino -- 22

so in this case you have ryan graves and jonas siegenthaler as 'late bloomers' but both had established themselves as regulars by 24. i'm not sure what was going on with graves other than maybe he was blocked by a relatively deep rangers blue line but he established himself quickly once the avs gave him a chance to play. siegenthaler though did legitimately take longer to establish himself than most good players. in part probably because he didn't fit in well with washington's group on defense and in part because he just took longer

you can repeat this kind of analysis for every team and it's very hard to find anyone like ethan bear or travis dermott that had been given opportunity to establish themselves and failed and then turned it around to become a mainstay. like i mentioned the only player i think qualifies unambiguously is mayfield and i'm still not sure he's actually good and not just a product of trotz' system. he's been pretty bad this year but he's also 30 so maybe he's just aging out of the league

it's really hard to do any kind of analysis on something like 'third pairing dman becomes second pairing dman' because those aren't really different things. a second pairing dman isn't just a dman that gets less ice time than the top 2 dmen on the roster and more than the bottom 2 it's also someone that can play those minutes effectively and how do you measure that?

subjectively, i don't really believe players improve much beyond their age 22 or 23 seasons. that's not to say they don't perform better but i mostly think it's a case of being put in better situations or just natural variance in performance. occaisonally you get a guy who finds 'another level' but they were mostly very good to begin with

what does that mean for the moneyballesque 'find undervalued assets' approach to team building in the nhl? look to acquire guys who haven't had opportunity and might thrive in your situation. acquiring guys who have failed to thrive despite being given the chance is almost always a bad bet

This is a weird analysis because the entire point behind Bear is that he established himself as a quality NHL regular at age 22 and was playing 22 minutes/game for an NHL playoff team at that age. Then he was a regular for an elite Carolina team last year before getting long COVID and being terrible after returning and lost his place.

Siegenthaler in particular was a guy who stuck on Washington's roster, was a regular healthy scratch, and then traded to NJ when he was about to turn 24 and then broke out. His development curve is basically identical to what we're hoping for with Bear. Graves isn't terribly dissimilar either.

 

[Bgav]

This is a weird analysis because the entire point behind Bear is that he established himself as a quality NHL regular at age 22 and was playing 22 minutes/game for an NHL playoff team at that age. Then he was a regular for an elite Carolina team last year before getting long COVID and being terrible after returning and lost his place.

Siegenthaler in particular was a guy who stuck on Washington's roster, was a regular healthy scratch, and then traded to NJ when he was about to turn 24 and then broke out. His development curve is basically identical to what we're hoping for with Bear. Graves isn't terribly dissimilar either.

Would be interested in what you think the Canucks should do to become a legit contender. Or what you think the management team is planning.

 

[credulous]

It’s actually not that hard to look into it.
So let’s see the criteria of playing 20+M as a loose proxy for top4 status.

I look through a couple of teams and see outside of the highly rated guys, who got to hypothetical top4 status after 23.

Orlov - 26yrs and 23 min avg
Gustafson - 26yr and 22:35 avg
Forbort - 24yr and 20:07 avg
Matt Roy - 26yr and 20:59 avg
Durzi - 24yr and 20:10 avg
Weegar - 26yr amd 20:07 avg
Rasmus Anderson - 24yr and 21:13avg

So this is like after sampling like 5 teams? Seems pretty damn common to see players stick around on the 3rd pair and then finally make the leap aroind 24-26.

none of those guys (except gustafsson. i assume you mean erik who is not even close to a top 4 defender) 'made it' at that late an age. all of them did it at 23 or earlier. sean durzi just turned 24 in october

 

[credulous]

This is a weird analysis because the entire point behind Bear is that he established himself as a quality NHL regular at age 22 and was playing 22 minutes/game for an NHL playoff team at that age. Then he was a regular for an elite Carolina team last year before getting long COVID and being terrible after returning and lost his place.

Siegenthaler in particular was a guy who stuck on Washington's roster, was a regular healthy scratch, and then traded to NJ when he was about to turn 24 and then broke out. His development curve is basically identical to what we're hoping for with Bear. Graves isn't terribly dissimilar either.

i'll concede bear is possibly a good player who just had a couple tough years. i think he got played way too high in the lineup his age 22 year and quickly fell out of favour when he couldn't hold it down but there's another version where he's actually good and just hasn't had the chance to show it

as mentioned i think siegenthaler is close and he's definitely the best case scenario for this kind of acquisition. if you want you can have siegenthaler on the win side of the ledger. graves though never got a shot in new york (zero nhl games) and was in colorado's top 6 less than a full season after they acquired him

i don't see any player with a history like dermott who worked out ever

 

[arttk]

none of those guys (except gustafsson. i assume you mean erik who is not even close to a top 4 defender) 'made it' at that late an age. all of them did it at 23 or earlier. sean durzi just turned 24 in october

I mean you can argue whether or not they are quality top4 and this is purely based on usage numbers and numbers don’t lie. I didn’t even go through like all the teams, these are just a couple.

 

[4Twenty]

Ethan Bear’s was a 39% GF at 5 on 5 player away from McDavid in Edmonton. There’s a reason he was run out of town. One of those seasons was the dog shit 7 opponent Canadian division.

He’s an ok target but theres a much longer list of players who play minutes early in their careers and then don’t kick on but regress after the upside is “tapped”.

 

[credulous]

I mean you can argue whether or not they are quality top4 and this is purely based on usage numbers and numbers don’t lie.

show your work? rasmus andersson was 3rd on the flames in ice time in his age 23 season

regardless i'm not arguing that if you're not a top 6 forward/top 4 dman by age 25 you never will be. plenty of players have been blocked by better players ahead of them. i'm saying that if you play top 6 minutes/top 4 minutes prior to age 25 but by age 25 you are no longer playing those minutes you're probably not a player with a future

 

[Hodgy]

sure okay. i was just explaining my methodology. you're right that this is all subjective but i haven't seen anything to really challenge my conclusions. i didn't go into this trying to prove 25 year olds can't get better i was honestly interested in the 'pro scouting moneyball' approach to roster construction some of the posters here seem to think the canucks should pursue. once you eliminate players like verhaeghe, marchment, bunting, gourde and graves who succeeded almost immediately upon reaching the nhl (even though it took them longer than average to reach the nhl) i wasn't able to find really any examples of players like bear, dermott or studnicka really succeeding by my criteria except the previously mentioned mayfield and maybe ceci

if you have counter examples that challenge my conclusions i'd love to hear them. i'm not ideologically driven here i'm just an amateur wanna be gm who is interested in how winning teams are constructed

The impetus for this discussion was the claim that Dermott essentially had no further potential to improve, and therefore, giving up a third for him was a bad trade. I don't think this was a fair comment. I will fully admit that I don't have the scope of knowledge nor time to even begin to undertake the required analysis to determine the percentage of 25 year olds that significantly improve as they age. @Vector we've got another fun exercise for you!

I think if you really stretch you can find guys like Devon Toews, Brayden McNabb, and Nate Schmidt could maybe fit. But to me the more common outcome is at 25 these dudes have peaked or lost the shine they had as younger nhl dmen like your Gudbranson’s and Sbisa’s.

Yes @Hodgy I realize the latter came at a significant cost. Just in general. What you see is what you get with these guys at this age.

For sure, I don't disagree with that. I have said the whole time that I thought it was a relatively low chance that a 25 year old would significantly improve. But again, the question is weighing that chance against the chance of the pick used to acquired that player reaching that level because obviously that's going to be a really low chance as well.

i'm not really saying you can't trade for age 25ish players successfully i'm just saying if you trade for guys who are 25 and have been given opportunities to solidify their place in the upper echelons of the nhl and they haven't really done it you're going to be disappointed. there's a massive difference in giving up a 3rd for ryan graves at 24 and giving up a 3rd for travis dermott at 25

Sure, but when you pick players in the 3rd or 5th round or whatever you're almost always going to be disappointed. I think this context is being missed in the analysis.

 

[Vector]

@Hodgy NO!

 

[credulous]

Sure, but when you pick players in the 3rd or 5th round or whatever you're almost always going to be disappointed. I think this context is being missed in the analysis.

i think you misunderstand my point. i'm not against trading picks for players. i'm not even against trading picks for players like ethan bear that are unlikely to really matter but do have some upside and uncertainty. i think the ethan bear trade was actually an okay risk

i'm against trading picks for guys like travis dermott who are no different than players available for free either in the summer or on waivers. dermott has no real upside and no real future on this roster. i'm not even sure he's worth playing over stillman or burroughs. that's why the dermott deal is so egregious to me. not because i think 3rd round picks are valuable. similarly studnicka for myrenberg. studnicka has slightly more upside than dermott because he's much younger but i think the myrenberg lottery ticket is more valuable than the studnicka lottery ticket. and i think the present value of studnicka is really no better than the value of someone in abby like aman or hoglander

i also think fans need to be realistic about the prospects of these kind of players. most are just roster filler. fans that are penciling in ethan bear as the second pairing right d for the next five years and thinking jack studnicka has a chance to be the 3rd line c the canucks need are getting way ahead of themselves

 

[arttk]

show your work? rasmus andersson was 3rd on the flames in ice time in his age 23 season

regardless i'm not arguing that if you're not a top 6 forward/top 4 dman by age 25 you never will be. plenty of players have been blocked by better players ahead of them. i'm saying that if you play top 6 minutes/top 4 minutes prior to age 25 but by age 25 you are no longer playing those minutes you're probably not a player with a future

I listed out the age and average ice time as a proxy. Here are more guys.

Demelo - 26 yr amd 20:09 avg
Forsling - 24yr and 19:57 avg
Marcus Petterson - 26yr and 20:45
Dumoulin - 25 yr and 20:33

It’s not really that uncommon and also a bunch of these guys actually played at like around 19 then dropped for a couple of seasons and then came back up.

 

[4Twenty]

The impetus for this discussion was the claim that Dermott essentially had no further potential to improve, and therefore, giving up a third for him was a bad trade. I don't think this was a fair comment. I will fully admit that I don't have the scope of knowledge nor time to even begin to undertake the required analysis to determine the percentage of 25 year olds that significantly improve as they age. @Vector we've got another fun exercise for you!



For sure, I don't disagree with that. I have said the whole time that I thought it was a relatively low chance that a 25 year old would significantly improve. But again, the question is weighing that chance against the chance of the pick used to acquired that player reaching that level because obviously that's going to be a really low chance as well.


Sure, but when you pick players in the 3rd or 5th round or whatever you're almost always going to be disappointed. I think this context is being missed in the analysis.

It isn’t being missed. The point is - is the juice worth the squeeze. Which is why the things you’re saying here were almost verbatim what we heard about the Baertschi-types years ago. Granted he doesn’t fit your games played benchmarks.

Sbisa and Guddy had 100’s of nhl games. By 24/25 we knew what they were.

 

[credulous]

I listed out the age and average ice time as a proxy. Here are more guys.

Demelo - 26 yr amd 20:09 avg
Forsling - 24yr and 19:57 avg
Marcus Petterson - 26yr and 20:45
Dumoulin - 25 yr and 20:33

It’s not really that uncommon and also a bunch of these guys actually played at like around 19 then dropped for a couple of seasons and then came back up.

you appear to have a way higher bar for 'probable top 4 dman' than i do. pettersson signed a 20 mil/5 year deal when he was 23. demelo is close. he bounced around the ahl his 22 and 23 year old seasons. i can concede demelo. forsling is close too and is a good counterexample if you lower the age to 24. dumoulin was a college player who took a couple years to get his shot but seized it right away

 

[MS]

Ethan Bear’s was a 39% GF at 5 on 5 player away from McDavid in Edmonton. There’s a reason he was run out of town. One of those seasons was the dog shit 7 opponent Canadian division.

He’s an ok target but theres a much longer list of players who play minutes early in their careers and then don’t kick on but regress after the upside is “tapped”.

He was at 42% GF in 19-20 away from McDavid and that was with a PDO of 97. His Corsi/Fenwick actually went *up* away from McDavid despite getting 20% fewer o-zone starts.

Lots of guys in Edmonton have numbers like that. Oskar Klefbom was a very good player and he's at 40% away from McDavid that season. When you don't play with McDavid on a team that isn't very good lines 2-4 and has generally had very iffy goaltending, you get a bad GF% number.

 

[arttk]

you appear to have a way higher bar for 'probable top 4 dman' than i do. pettersson signed a 20 mil/5 year deal when he was 23. demelo is close. he bounced around the ahl his 22 and 23 year old seasons. i can concede demelo. forsling is close too and is a good counterexample if you lower the age to 24. dumoulin was a college player who took a couple years to get his shot but seized it right away

well I think 20min is like the universally accepted bar for a top4 dman.

Funny, found even more guys that breaks 20min at a later age. Chiarot at 28 and Graves at 26. Seems quite common to see guys become top4 guys in their mid 20’s.
if you just look at the trend of those guys, Bear kinda looks similar so it’s not like some outliar event for him to become a top4 guy again.

Plus if you want to lower the ice time for what constitutes as top4, then technically you are arguing Bear is playing like a top4 right now because he’s average 18:30ish this seasons.

 

[credulous]

well I think 20min is like the universally accepted bar for a top4 dman.

Funny, found even more guys that breaks 20min at a later age. Chiarot at 28 and Graves at 26. Seems quite common to see guys become top4 guys in their mid 20’s.
if you just look at the trend of those guys, Bear kinda looks similar so it’s not like some outliar event for him to become a top4 guy again.

Plus if you want to lower the ice time for what constitutes as top4, then technically you are arguing Bear is playing like a top4 right now because he’s average 18:30ish this seasons.

chiarot was 24 and i literally wrote a whole paragraph about graves in a post you responded to. i'm trying to be charitable but if you're not going to discuss this in good faith i don't know why i should continue

i guess we just have to wait and see on bear and dermott