Speculation: Roster Building thread: Part XIX (Thanks, Sam)

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Actually, I took it upon myself to monitor Key and Kreider that game. He had a hit, a blocked shot and 2 SM (shots that missed the net) that for some reason did not show up on the score sheet. Makes you wonder if the guys doing the official scoring are the same guys making rulings on goalie interference. Anyway, Kreider can twirl around the ice for 30 minutes a game, He just won’t engage in areas that can give him whiplash apparently, which definitely limits his effectiveness. I still think he can be effective on the PP because of his effective wrist shot, but either way his net front needs to be taken by Cuylle. Kreider being unable/unwilling to resume his net front presence is THE reason the PP stinks.
now ask yourself if that is worth $6.5M...

likely, the answer is no.
 
To be fair to Sully, is there an assistant coach we had that is remembered fondly? I mean Scott Arniel is about to win the President's Trophy with Winnipeg and I remember nothing but complaints about him.
Arniel was our PP coach, and our PP *sucked* when he was here. It was beyond horrid considering the personnel we had.
 
The issue with Trocheck is JT Miller. They are very close. Their wives are very close. Trocheck is here to stay with JT on the team. Trocheck is easier to move than Zibanejad. Limited NTC this summer.
Trocheck is fine considering the ceiling of his level of play + his affordable $6.5M cap hit. I won't even go into "intangibles", but he's got more heart than 70% of this roster at this point (looking at Zib, Trouba before he was traded, Kreider)
 
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But i bet he can drive some of the dead weight out of town faster.

This core would get Jon Cooper fired in half a season.

The current NY Ranger core eats " player friendly" coaches like Laf eats poutine infused salads.

Thats the conundrum aint it.

This Vet Core doesnt respect "player" coaches, but they full on pout and quit on any coach that does get tough for even a second.

They want player coaches so they can play pond hockey, but poison the ice when given consequences for poor play.

No spine and they confuse pride with ego.
 
I know Sullivan was a Torts assistant but I don't know if he's the hardass we need, at least these days.

He's coming from a gig where he wrote down the lineup and Crosby did the rest of the coaching.

plus, wasnt 90% of NYHFB killing him becasue we had a star studded PP that sucked. Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, out...
 
For a couple seasons Trocheck really rubbed off positively on panarin with his aggressive play, but this year it's flipped. The amount of turnovers Trocheck makes on dumb passes and stickhandling is so much higher than it was in past years. The same risky blueline shit from bread. In all likelihood Trocheck will be here next year and possibly even be the captain (just give it to JT imo). I think he can be a real positive influence between a couple young wingers, whether that be Laff, Cuylle, perreault, Othmann, etc. I like the idea of having veteran centers on a team of young wingers.
I'd go with no captain if those are the only choices.
 
Oh man, you got me. Nobody has ever played through an injury before. I'm so embarrassed.
Either he’s injured and he’s an idiot for trying to play through it or he’s not injured and he just is playing like garbage. Not sure why you think playing with this debilitating back injury is a good look. If it’s affecting his play so much he should sit out and let it heal instead of selfishly playing despite being a liability.
 
cant help but laugh at the Post article about Trouba and the Rangers. Laf saying he was one of the guys who took him under his wing immediately. I guess that's why Alexis is getting his extracurricular's in order with this Chopt endorsement while the team is sputtering their way out of the playoffs. I cant be the only one who sees this is a problem.
It's been clear to me after Trouba's first season here that Hockey was always his second priority. His "brand" was his first, which just so happened to revolve around his city life, which is where his wife happened to work...

There's just a lot there with Trouba that screams hockey is not actually important... talk about a locker room cancer
 
Players should have no lives but hockey. No opinions, endorsements, hobbies, friends, family, loved ones, pets, parents, sisters, brothers, phones, tablets, tvs, transistor radios, and thoughts. Anything other than winning with teammates (BUT THOSE TEAMMATES BETTER NOT BE FRIENDS!), is a bad look. Country club. Soft. Beta. Low T. Receding hairline. Belly fat. Don't need it. Don't want it. Yell at someone. Hit someone.
That's not what the previous poster was saying. It's one thing to have a life outside of hockey. it's another thing to have hockey not be your top priority if the goal is to win a stanley cup. This directly translates into questioning which of your players have a "winning attitude"... That's what people are talking about when this is brought up.

Laf himself doing this salad commercial really isn't the problem... It's the vets like Zib and Trouba with their "side hustles"... I have to also blame management for these contracts -- these guys aren't unknown entities, and it's not like this stuff comes as a complete surpose to management. If you see that a guy devotes a large chunk of his time to his hobby, that needs to be factored into whether or not you should be committing to him.

In trouba's case, I mostly blame gorton -- his beer goggles created an actual obsession with obtaining him, I think when they finally agreed to the trade it was like the 4th or 5th time they had made a serious effort to acquire him, and at the end of it he turned out to be a f***ing loser-attitude player who was NOTHING like what was advertised.
 
The issue I have isnt with Lafreniere alone, it's the pattern. I dont have a problem with players having interests outside of hockey, but when a knock on the team has been their inconsistent effort and postseason flameouts, I have a right as a fan to question why Jacob Trouba is spending all summer painting after the Devils bounced us in the first round. This team is a lot of yapping about cliches and not a lot of actions that actually show they are committed. Fox started a podcast sponsored by a bagel store last season. Mika has a multiple other business interests outside of hockey. Winning is the only thing that matters to you and I, but not to these players. It's frustrating, because winning cures all.
Trouba already found success in the NHL. I have more of an issue with players who are being held back in the NHL due to a lack of ability and don't make that a focal point for the offseason - such as skating. I'm not sure at what point Trouba started getting ready for the season, but most players don't go into off-season training immediately when the season ends. I also don't think Trouba spent all his free time in the summer painting, but it was just a media thing MSG wanted to cover.

It's hard to work on game situations during off-season training. You're not practicing with the team. The organization can't hold anything. If you're an established NHL player, It's more about getting your strength, agility, conditioning, and mental focus ready for the season. For those that have question marks about their strength and skating, those are the players who need to make a much needed off-season plan.

Camp is where your intense practices happen. During the season, practices are few and far between, and the ones that take place are more to clean up fundamentals and rarely achieve changing anything when it comes to effort or skill. It's hard to work on a powerplay when it's a calm, relaxed atmosphere. I wouldn't expect much of in-season practices to translate on the ice. Drills they've been doing all their lives won't change anything. Now what effort are they actually putting into practice? Probably not much and it doesn't seem they bother cleaning up anything.
 
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I think we all have our own individual narratives when it comes to what we want from the team, but I do think that pretty much everyone on here agrees that significant changes are needed in some shape or another. The way this season unfolded is why I was so adamantly against Drury hiring Laviolette in the first place, and it was so predictable after his latest stint in Washington. He had an aging core with veterans that tuned him out and didn't want to play his style of play. Why did Drury suddenly think that would be different here when we had the same exact issues with Gallant. MacLellan and Patrick then bring in a younger coach in Carberry, and he has that team turned around in a year; a big offseason of smart moves made by Patrick has them taking another step and they're on their way to a President's Trophy. Is there a bit of a 2023 Seattle vibe to them where every single thing is going right? Yeah, absolutely, but I think they've put enough good pieces in place that when they regress back to the mean a bit it won't be too far of a drop off.

For the Rangers, I don't really see how Drury turns this around, assuming he's still the one that gets the chance to do so. I still think there's organizational failures from top-to-bottom when it comes to analyzing how to play hockey in the modern era, and that really shouldn't be the case for one of the wealthiest organizations in the league. I said this almost two years ago now, but Drury really didn't do enough to replace the people from the Gorton era and reshape the front office. I honestly don't know where else he goes from here.

There's a few situations around the league where I wonder if we could get lucky, i.e., Ryan Smith wanting to move on from Bill Armstrong and co and bring in his own guys. If they let Armstrong/Tourigny go, I'd hire both in a heartbeat. The other intriguing idea was mentioned by Seravalli yesterday when discussing an NHL team David Carle. I'd be all for a situation where Drury hires Carle and works with him to build a team in his vision for how they want to play hockey. Denver has been unreal under him, and I love that he's under the Jim Montgomery coaching tree; Drury should've fired Laviolette and hired Montgomery the second Boston let him go.

I like the Woodcroft idea, but I also like the idea of hiring Carle and letting him stick for 5 years to actually build something here. They'll get good pieces moving away from some of the guys with term that are still here. Defer the 2025 pick unless it magically becomes top-4 and take the few steps back to regroup from 2026-28. They do have some good young pieces in the pipeline, but they're missing the dynamic skill up front and from the backend. Nothing is gonna change here unless they change the process. Drury already missed the boat once not doing this two years ago. He can't do it again. If he wont, he shouldn't get the chance to make the same mistakes.

Carle would be a f***ing slam dunk. He's an excellent coach who has won at multiple levels and actually knows how to run a bench and game plan for his opponents.

That said, I don't think he'd come here. He's very, very, very happy at Denver and while I know that they can offer him a f*** load of cash and everyone basically has a price, he isn't as driven by the dollar as some other guys who have made the jump from NCAA to pro. Seems like a seamless transition for him to take over in Colorado after Bednar gets axed (probably after they fall short again this year) if he's going to make the jump at all.

Plus I think you'd basically have to give him legitimate roster management input beyond setting a line up.
 
Yea he’s such a warrior to be playing through that major back injury, thank god we have him on our team, he’s been so phenomenal this season.
This is the part that I agree with you 100% on - hockey players should stop playing through injuries and pretending that doing so is some valiant, altruistic action. But that's not just a Kreider issue, that's every single NHLer in the league. It's a cultural problem.
 
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This to a t... Torts built a good roster, AV took it to the next level for 2 season, but each season he started adding "his guys" which was an 8-year-old antiquated team building process that worked in f***ing 2008... by the time 2016 rolled around, AVs "guys" were actually just garbage. This was piled on top of the typical NYR "bargain bin free agency signings", of which none of them worked except for Benoit Pouliot for exactly one season.
I won’t accept this Ryan Malone slander.

Speaking of Ryan Malone. It was baffling that the team brought that guy in knowing he loved booger sugar and treated him like he was supposed to be a mentor for JT Miller knowing JT had a reputation as a party boy.
 
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Either he’s injured and he’s an idiot for trying to play through it or he’s not injured and he just is playing like garbage. Not sure why you think playing with this debilitating back injury is a good look. If it’s affecting his play so much he should sit out and let it heal instead of selfishly playing despite being a liability.
I don't think it's a good look. I think it's idiotic that players play through injuries. All I'm saying is we should stop blaming Chris for doing something that every NHLer is encouraged/lauded for doing.
 

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