Player Discussion: official trade deadline 2025 // discussion thread

[majormajor]

competence and effort aren't the issue here, it's fit. that goes both ways and isn't just about the financial resources they've committed to him.

severson is at his best when he can play his style of game, but that style doesn't fit well with any of the current LHD on the roster. when it does, he can bring a lot of good things, just with some mistakes mixed in.

I think it's more effort and less of a fit issue - I think Evason is working on him, about his mistakes but also his effort level. And his faults are being very over exaggerated here.

I'm not persuaded that there is some other system where Severson is a better fit. We play a system with a ton of activation by the D-men, we like high pressure and tight gaps in the neutral zone, and quick ups on the counter attack. This is all Damon Severson's wheelhouse. He has paired very well with Jake Christiansen at times, and if you get good results with a pairing with a third pair defender like that, even just for 14 minutes a game, that's very valuable. His results with Werenski are also good (exactly the same as Werenski's G and xG results with Fabbro or Provorov, and the corsi with Severson is much better). He also hasn't been paired with Mateychuk yet and that seems to me like potentially a better fit than Mateychuk-Provorov. He's a very imperfect player but the idea that our particular system or set of pairing mates is a poor fit for him I would call straight nonsense. He's not going to look better in most systems.

 

[majormajor]

I'm admittedly not the most knowledgable in hockey systems/tactics, but as I understand it Evason's system calls for a fair amount of this. seems like that's how most of their breakouts have gone – chips along the wall to the wing.

mateychuk is also good at breakouts and profiles as a krug type in short order. could definitely see a fit with brandon carlo in that kind of role.


seems like there's mutual interest in a long-term deal between gavrikov and the kings. he'd be a really nice piece here, though.

i really liked Pocke CBJ's piece on potential targets for the blue line, which included gavrikov. the key takeaways were:

1. they need to improve rush defense (which is where severson excels)
2. they arguably should opt to follow the contender blueprint (elite 1D on the top pair, shutdown second pair, puck mover on the third pair) but don't have true shutdown pieces yet

that piece pre-dates the seth jones chatter but frankly I can't see a great fit there. jack han pointed out some stuff a while ago with his skating while defending the rush and it doesn't appear to have gotten any better. he has some serious issues in that area. even with retention, I just don't see a great fit.


there was also a Pocke CBJ piece on forward targets, lots of the usual suspects on there (nyquist) but one guy who surprisingly stood out was tsyplakov from the islanders.

I finally had a chance to go through Schumacher's blue line targets piece - it reaffirms my interest in Adam Pelech as the #1 trade target, and brings me back to thinking that K'Andre Miller could work very well here. Gavrikov is of course the top UFA target and we should be monitoring Kovacevic closely to see how he does down the stretch and in the playoffs in New Jersey.

Schumacher does little writeups on dozens of players in this piece but doesn't write on Pelech despite his high end defensive ability, strong analytical results, and rumored availability. We should be talking about this player more.

There are a few analytical choices that Schumacher makes that I'd be curious about. The use of corsi over xG is something I see less and less of these days. There can be a big difference, for instance where puck movers that struggle to clear their crease will have good corsi defense but bad xG defense. The graphs and extended discussion of quality of competition is maybe a bit overplayed, most of these D are seeing a full spectrum of opponents, and the quality of comp differences for say Werenski and Quinn Hughes is just a few extra shifts of Werenski vs top opponents. It's not a totally different set of opponents, it's the same ones and one coach choosing to target certain opponents a few times per game. Intense line matching is rare in the regular season.

 

[Xoggz22]

As has been noted on here before... ultimately Severson cost is a sunk cost. While I'd prefer we didn't have $6.4MM invested in a player that plays best when under 18 min a night, in theory he won't impact the CAP at all in the coming years. Three more years of him probably has absolutely no impact and CBJ could still push for a top pair or top 4 RHD even if they sign Fabbro (which I hope). Eventually someone will push Severson for his job and at that point retention may not be terrible and I don't think the CBJ payroll ever grows to over $100MM. Maybe, but I'm not sure I see that. So, for now, if he can be consistently better (than not) and we can get growth in the top 4 D in general (Z, Mateychuk, Fabbro?), we can manage his contract regardless of TOI expectations vs salary. Still don't like the situation, but with the big Cap jump, there are still options to keep him and just limit his minutes to support this effectiveness.

 

[Aaaarrgghh]

I finally had a chance to go through Schumacher's blue line targets piece - it reaffirms my interest in Adam Pelech as the #1 trade target, and brings me back to thinking that K'Andre Miller could work very well here. Gavrikov is of course the top UFA target and we should be monitoring Kovacevic closely to see how he does down the stretch and in the playoffs in New Jersey.

Schumacher does little writeups on dozens of players in this piece but doesn't write on Pelech despite his high end defensive ability, strong analytical results, and rumored availability. We should be talking about this player more.

It was funny how Pelech consistently stood out in a positive way and wasn't highlighted. Maybe Schumacher thought he was unlikely to get moved. Interestingly, Pelech's NTC does also become an M-NTC this off-season. Where have you seen rumours that he's available? That's news to me.