AuroraBorealis
Back-to-back hater
The Predators were a bad team and Granlund was one of the culprits. When you have a guy who gets incredible offensive usage and puts up such mediocre production, he is hurting you.
You can't "maximize" every player. You can just do the best with what you've got. What Granlund has is like, some vision and decent hands aside from when he's shooting the puck (the time when having good hands is most useful). That is an incredibly limited skill set especially when you consider being unable to shoot makes it harder to pass.
I respect that you like goal diff and +/- but like all stats SSS can skew results. I can't point to anything Granlund did to improve his lines defensively. At best he's ZAR with more passing ability but less size? The stats you like to quote had Granlund as miserable, miserable defensive player. Which jived with the eye test. Guess who finished last in Nashville this year in +/-?
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Maybe there's a version of the team next year in which he's the 3C and our 3rd line is just uneventful nothingness but we upgrade LD/Goalie/LW and are successful. I'd rather get rid of bad players making big money if the team is actually serious about improving though.
I don't care one iota what he did in Nashville defensively if he does that better here, which he did. That's factual. He had 8 takeaways and 3 giveaways for example.
His lines were far less porous than others post-deadline, with heavy defensive allocation, and he did just fine on the PK.
What eye test? The biased one? All people ever talked about here was Granlund's offense. They weren't even paying attention to him away from the puck. They just called him a ghost or whatever.
No one here ever mentioned his backchecking, pressuring, marking and effective zone exits because they were so down on his scoring.
He used to be a good defensive player earlier in his career. I don't know why that disappeared, but if he can rekindle it then that adds value. Goals against prevention could have gotten us into the playoffs too, if more contributed that way.
I never said I wanted to keep Granlund. I've suggested trading him multiple times. I was saying I don't want to take Markstrom in exchange, and was weighing the +/-'s and risk of doing that.
Would rather burn a 1st or a 2nd+3rd to unload him and get a proper goalie in free agency/trade than roll the dice at the most critical position. It's hard to trust Markstrom right now and not everyone's an upgrade on Jarry just because they're not him. Odds are Jarry improves next season anyway. He played hurt since like October.
My preferred 3C is Compher or O'Reilly. Even ERod might work. He's excellent defensively and is used to shit usage here. He followed up last season with solid production again this season. He loves the city and enjoyed his time here and probably will be fairly cheap. That's probably the most realistic option, since other free agents might not choose us.
