Speculation: Roster Building Thread: Part XX (WTF are we going to do this Off-Season edition)

[Boris Zubov]

It's funny because I assumed at this point that Valiquette played for the Torts Rangers but no, equal parts Renney and Torts

Steve Valiquette Hockey Stats and Profile at hockeydb.com

Statistics of Steve Valiquette, a hockey player from Etobicoke, ONT born Aug 20 1977 who was active from 1993 to 2012.

www.hockeydb.com

Forgot how few actual games he played here.

I just learned that Steve & I share the same birthday.

 

[Levitate]

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Vally is right, no one wants to be accountable. The Mika and Kreider answers epitomize that. It’s a joke. Neither of them owned any blame. At least Fox and Laf did in some ways. These two are the most tenured leaders. It’s horrible.

“The players were on notice”
- exactly. There didn’t need to be more communication on that to Kreider and Zibanejad. You gotta real damn dense to not understand what was at stake and what was going on. It is just bitching and moaning with no accountability.

See, I want to still like Mika and Kreider and all that but it seems very obvious that they feel that they are the team and are in control. Drury threatening that control sent the team careening off the cliff. They got another coach fired.

You might love playing here and think you've put in your dues and are owed something else but you're only owed your contract. Brian Leetch wasn't consulted before he was traded and he's 10x the player these guys are

Drury could do shit a lot better than he has but players are just running around out there thinking they get to dictate the shape and style of the team and meanwhile they've won jack and shit.


oh and for all the "Gorton put this team together and Drury is ruining it!" Gorton's the one who drafted all those draft busts, he's the one who brought in a bunch of these guys, he set this team up with the flaws that is has. I'm not excusing Drury but Gorton had his hand in where this team has landed as well.

 

[LokiDog]

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Vally is right, no one wants to be accountable. The Mika and Kreider answers epitomize that. It’s a joke. Neither of them owned any blame. At least Fox and Laf did in some ways. These two are the most tenured leaders. It’s horrible.

“The players were on notice”
- exactly. There didn’t need to be more communication on that to Kreider and Zibanejad. You gotta real damn dense to not understand what was at stake and what was going on. It is just bitching and moaning with no accountability.

Hundo P. Amen.

 

[Roo Returns]

Seems like a cop out quote from Mika to me. This core is soft. We've known that for a long time.

Mika will either step it up this summer, or he's gonna be a compliance cap buy out summer 2026.

Fox and Laf have more time to train this summer. No excuses.

 

[Boris Zubov]

Seems like a cop out quote from Mika to me. This core is soft. We've known that for a long time.

Mika will either step it up this summer, or he's gonna be a compliance cap buy out summer 2026.

Fox and Laf have more time to train this summer. No excuses.

Unless you know something I don't, compliance buyouts are a thing of the past. The owners aren't going to eat extra salary when the league is as healthy financially as it's ever been.

 

[Levitate]

I wonder if Zibanejad just signed his way out of NY with that quote. That's "Waive or you sit. As long as it takes" territory.

 

[Alluckks]

Unless you know something I don't, compliance buyouts are a thing of the past. The owners aren't going to eat extra salary when the league is as healthy financially as it's ever been.

We're gonna have Mika take a long walk off a short dock with some cement shoes

 

[Boris Zubov]

I wonder if Zibanejad just signed his way out of NY with that quote. That's "Waive or you sit. As long as it takes" territory.

I think it's going to take a prick of a coach who severely cuts his ice time. Otherwise I could see him digging his heels in worse than Tuba tried to.

 

[pld459666]

It doesn't change responsibilities, but do you not empathize at all with how it can impact motivation? Any human would be affected by the uncertainty of whether they might be fired the next day, whether their colleagues might be fired the next day, whether they are going to be part of the company's future and (presumed) successes.

And before you say "this the NHL, they are millionaires, they should suck it up", I'll say this: this is the NHL, every single person in the league is an elite athlete, the difference between first place and last place often is just a few percentage points of effort & execution. Even the slightest amount of doubt, or lack of motivation, can have a huge impact on a team.

No. I dont.

 

[Gordon Bombay]

Calvin DeHaan being an unhinged, slightly filtered 9th dman I think might be the highlight of the year for me.

"What's there to reflect on? I played 3 games". Makes me wanna say something like that to my boss tomorrow

 

[Riche16]

I mean to me the issue is that they did this (to a lesser extent) with Gallant in his second year. As well. Lifeless, no cohesion, no attention to details, no urgency, just lackluster play and results and looking like they tuned out the coach.

multiple years and multiple coaches with the same core group and it gets me thinking it's something a bit more than "a down year"

Because it is more than a down year.

These players are either ass, don't try AT ALL or have the mental fortitude of a Faberge' egg.

You can hire & fire coach after coach & even GM after GM, but the product on the ice is still Chernobyl water.

Why?

It's rotten from the top down & Dolan isn't going anywhere. What HE should do is hire a TRUE president of Hockey Ops who can & will actually initiate a MASSIVE change in culture, but we all know that won't happen & even if he tried he'd hire Homer Simpson without all that acumen.

 

[Riche16]

So don't just DJ clubs & festivals all summer?

Interesting idea.

I wonder if he's clueing the rest of the team in?

 

[Kocur Dill]

File this under: Duh. Ya Think. No sh!t.

The Panarin ordeal sealed that timelines fate.

 

[NYR Viper]

I think what we are seeing is more likely the result of a groundwork set forth by Gorton. There was a common theme with some of his draft picks. He went out of his way to acquire Trouba and lock in Kreider.

Drury, for all his faults, has been playing a game where his hands have been somewhat tied and many of the pieces of the puzzle have been glued to the board for a while. We’ve seen him push Trouba and Goodrow out the door. I get the sense that some of these guys pouting leaned heavily on them to direct them when necessary. Hell, how many times did Trouba have to go out of his way to try to get guys going when he was here? It was ridiculous even at the time.

I’m actually fairly excited to see the shape the roster takes moving in to the offseason.

 

[Boris Zubov]

I think what we are seeing is more likely the result of a groundwork set forth by Gorton. There was a common theme with some of his draft picks. He went out of his way to acquire Trouba and lock in Kreider.

Drury, for all his faults, has been playing a game where his hands have been somewhat tied and many of the pieces of the puzzle have been glued to the board for a while. We’ve seen him push Trouba and Goodrow out the door. I get the sense that some of these guys pouting leaned heavily on them to direct them when necessary. Hell, how many times did Trouba have to go out of his way to try to get guys going when he was here? It was ridiculous even at the time.

I’m actually fairly excited to see the shape the roster takes moving in to the offseason.

Drury just continued what Gorton started. He's the moron who gave Mika that deal which basically anointed him a Ranger for life & then he did the same for Igor while severely overpaying him.

 

[Oscar Lindberg]

I’m glad the discourse has circled back around to “it’s Gorton’s fault that Chris Drury has been a mediocre GM for the last half decade”

 

[mrhockey193195]

I think it's going to take a prick of a coach who severely cuts his ice time. Otherwise I could see him digging his heels in worse than Tuba tried to.

I still don't understand, what the f*** does this even mean? Trouba negotiated for a partial NMC clause, and when the time came, he decided to use it. Where's the issue? Are NMCs/NTCs just for show? If a player isn't allowed to use it, why do they exist?

 

[I Eat Crow]

The Mika quote and this quote are pretty annoying.



KAM was asked about his shitty year then he immediately deflects blame towards the team and the noise. GTFOH.

Trade him.

Blaming the locker room drama for his shit play. Mental midget. All star tools but AHL brain.

 

[Boris Zubov]

I still don't understand, what the f*** does this even mean? Trouba negotiated for a partial NMC clause, and when the time came, he decided to use it. Where's the issue? Are NMCs/NTCs just for show? If a player isn't allowed to use it, why do they exist?

Are you conveniently forgetting how he invoked his wife's career as a reason he couldn't leave last summer? And how he had his agent poison the well of interested teams? He made it clear he wasn't going to make it easy for the team to move him within the parameters of his limited NTC. He literally nuked the trade market for himself.

It was only after he was threatened with waivers in December that he finally relented. And after all of that, Drury still worked with him to do right by him. f*** that guy. Seriously f*** him. This is the same guy who strong armed the Jets as an RFA.

 

[I Eat Crow]

So essentially what we got out of clean out day was nothing. They're disappointed with the season, blaming it on distractions for the most part, pointing back to Goodrow and trouba exits, and not a ton of accountability. Why am I not surprised...

And I'm not trying to downplay kreider or anybody else that had injuries but it's all got to be put in context here. There are guys playing right now in the playoffs with worse injuries Jane then what this group has. If you're hurt bad enough that you can't play then don't play, and if you can play then you should be playing to a standard and at the very least if you can't physically play up to your normal standard you should have the effort component. Throughout this entire lackadaisical roster effort and accountability were absent all year and now it even sprawls into breakup day.

I don't want to hear any more crap about a lot of outside noise or our teammates got traded away or whatever other crap they want to whine about at this point, just own how bad you were this year. Just own the fact that if you actually provided even a marginally consistent effort this season the team would have made the playoffs.

The fact that there's still whining about Goodrow and trouba, or that Mika is projecting that somehow he should be in the know about what's going on in the organization just continues to wreak of entitlement. Of course the captain of the team is going to have a line of communication to the coach and potentially up to the management, but when the captain is traded somebody within the room needs to fill that void and it doesn't look like anybody in that room actually filled the void. That's on the f***ing players.

And if Mika's going to cry about it then he should have been the guy to try to step up. The guy wants to wear an A on his jersey and yet he doesn't actually fill that void in any way whatsoever other than to scream at a referee when Miller gets slashed in the nuts. What a bunch of just absolute zombies...

Country club shit.

Drury will earn a stay of execution if he trades Kreider and gets Zibanejad and Panarin to waive.

 

[Shesterkybomb]

Yea, lets run it again, that will work.

This is why i’m glad Drury is staying. He doesnt care about catering them, Krieder’s ass is gone. He chose his own path this season.

Ya let's bring in more teams 7th dmen and hope that's a solution for our top 4, then when they've proven absolutely nothing sign them to contracts.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Ya let's bring in more teams 7th dmen and hope that's a solution for our top 4, then when they've proven absolutely nothing sign them to contracts.

I’m not saying to do that?

The shit core is why we sucked this year, not the bottom pair defensemen.

 

[Shesterkybomb]

Howden got quite a lot of middle six time his first two years and played PP his rookie year. This might have been a function of a lack of talent on the team and was the source of the boards incessant, excessive mean girl posting about him because Quinn seemed to prefer him to Chytil or Andersson.

He was never as bad as everyone made him out to be, I knew it would blow up in our face and it's just another example of how we can't develop players and it needs to change

 

[Alluckks]

Trade him.

Blaming the locker room drama for his shit play. Mental midget. All star tools but AHL brain.

He said that the first part of this year was the most challenging of his career.

That is insane.

The first part of a year where your team didn't even make the playoffs and you are a cemented vet with long term job security not just in money but in contract clauses as well, tons of millions made, and a family - but this is the hardest part?

The playoffs where the teams that you were a key part of fell short, and you well underperformed weren't more challenging? The time you got traded away from the team that drafted you and you had no long term job security or things to fall back on for support or encouragement or security weren't more challenging? The season where you took a hard hit to chest and went out with a major injury when you were having a great year and it stifled your production and your team's performance wasn't more challenging?

Every "challenge" Mika faces is the newest hardest challenge of his life. Jesus christ

 

[Shesterkybomb]

I’m not saying to do that?

The shit core is why we sucked this year, not the bottom pair defensemen.

We have bottom pair defensemen now playing in our top 4 is the problem, we rid ourselves of Trouba and Goodrow and immediately spent the money on everyone's 7th dmen. Dehann, Borgan, Soucey, all players you don't willingly target as solutions to your top 4. We have near 9 mill spent on Borgan Soucey, and Vaak, none of who can realistically play with either Miller or Fox. Imo if it's between Kreider or Drury staying or leaving I'll drive Drury to the airport. Though I think they both should leave.