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

[mas0764]

How quickly they acted makes me feel like Lavi was always just a placeholder for when Sully was available.

How Sully fits into the type of team Drury wants to build, I don't know, because I have no idea what Drury wants to build.

Not sure Drury entirely knows.

 

[mas0764]

I think the "you need x,y,z players" to win a cup is an exhausting conversation because more than half the time, you need to go back and retroactively apply a label to a player.

For example, no one on the planet would have tagged Eichel as a true cup caliber #1C before he won - He was coming off of his third straight sub PPG injury riddled season.

The best teams are usually the ones with the fewest holes (that was not Colorado this year and its a point I tried to make several times while they were being glazed by everyone, Lindgren was their #4 and he is legit a guy you cannot win with in your lineup) and players who are capable of playing to a certain level - It's not about a label because it's not always the best guys who come through (see: #10)

Sometimes those guys are elite (MacK, Crosby, Point, M.Tkachuk, etc) and sometimes they aren't (Marchessault, ROR, Verhaeghe, etc.)

The NYR's issue is that they have suffered from pretty much all of the above.

Just using last year as an example - Too many holes (Lindgren and Trouba in their top 4, a 3rd line that accounted for 3 goals for the entirety of the playoffs.)

Not enough people capable of really stepping up and playing at an elite level - If we're using last year as an example, They got more than they expected out of Trocheck, Igor, Lafreniere and some how, a 6 goal run from Goodrow (I will forever be annoyed that they booted Goodrow's output because you just aren't getting that from a 4th liner again.)

The only guy who really performed at an elite level of that group was Igor (whose play in the post season is honestly underrated here. He's levels better in the playoffs than even Hank was.) Trocheck (bordered on "elite" performance) and Laf gave you very strong supplementary production/performance, but everyone else did either bare minimum to carry their weight or were underwhelming, bad or catastrophically bad. Goodrow honestly sucked, but 6 goals is f***ing 6 goals. Thats more than the Rangers got from everyone other than Kreider, Trocheck and Laf.

It would have also helped if our actual "elite" player actually played like one.

tl;dr: "elite" or "generational" labels don't really matter. You need to have quality depth and players capable of stepping up. Rangers haven't had enough of either and it's been both masked by how good #30 has been in the playoffs and magnified by #10 basically turning into a run of the mill secondary scorer in the playoffs.

Fair point regarding “sometimes you can’t see an elite player or an elite performance coming till it happens,” but because it’s noticeable after the fact, you better be in the business of getting players you think can play at that elite level.

Maybe Eichel wasn’t a sure thing to reach that level till he did, but he was always a better bet than Mika.

 

[haohmaru]

Uh the Avalanche have a Cup…?

You’re proving our point. It’s hard even when you have greats. If you don’t have enough greats - as we don’t - you basically have zero chance.

Not sure what you're puzzled about. I said that Mackinnon has one Cup in 12 years and just got bounced in the first round coupled with playing alongside the best defenseman in the league.

You constantly act like these things lead to automatic dynasties. They don't.

Ovechkin is the greatest scoring wing in the history of hockey and he's done it once in 20 years.

As to your second sentence - is ROR a "great"? Is Eichel? I see people shitting on JT Miller (not elite? come on) and his 99/103 point seasons and PPG pace as if he's some washed up scrub.

Is Eichel the better player? Sure. But you can do worse down the middle than Miller/Mika/Trocheck.

I'm not even arguing (and never have) that team building shouldn't be from the Centers forward. It should be. There are plenty of "greats" that have never won a Cup. There's more to it.

And, honestly, you know as well as I do that no matter how much you espouse the "mas0764 method" your plan will never see the light of of day with this owner.

 

[mas0764]

Miller-Fox
Soucy-Borgen
Jones-Schneider
Vaakanainen

I feel like thats actually not a bad defense if they run a zone D instead of the man on man crap they have the last few years.

That second pair is nowhere close to good enough.

 

[IDvsEGO]

Yeah there kinda is a formula to win a Cup though.

That formula is “have good players who out perform their contracts”

and get hot at the right time.

Florida won with barkov and Reinhart down the middle. Great 1C, solid 2c. Not the best center depth.
Beat Edmonton who went mcdavid + drai
A much better 1-2.
Florida had the better goalie at times, and the better depth/defense.

Vegas beat Florida.
Eichel + karlsson beat barkov and reinhart.
And again better depth and defense beats top 6 centers.

going back further, Washington beats vegas
Backstrom and kuznetsov won a cup.


you need specific pieces, but overall the goal is to be better than your opponent for 16 games.
If you can tie up the top 6 lines, and draw those. Then the series is decided by depth and goaltending.

There’s no one size fits all. It’s just that top centers have a lot of impact.

 

[haohmaru]

It’s too late now. The formative years are teens and early 20s.

It’s not that NO ONE develops after 23 but it’s an uphill battle. The Rangers blew his window.

He maybe was never gonna be Barkov but he should have been better than he is and the Rangers are very much to blame too.

Nah, I disagree with that. Water finds its level and so does talent if there's will and mental fortitude.

I wish nothing for the best for the guy and didn't want him traded. It is what it is.

 

[Boris Zubov]

Jagr erasure

Messier as well.

 

[mas0764]

You constantly act like these things lead to automatic dynasties. They don’t.

No, I don’t act like that and I’ve never come close to saying it. If that’s your takeaway then that’s why you aren’t getting it. You aren’t getting the argument apparently.

Machinehead said it good a few pages back. The Avalanche don’t have the right mix this year but because they have the generational pieces in place, getting the right mix is way way easier any given year by filling holes.

We have a much larger uphill struggle cause we don’t have the foundation in place yet - and never did with this core. Some of you were fooled but I was not. Our foundation has cracks and it always was gonna be faulty when Mika and Kreider were two of your best pieces.

Miller is probably on the fringe, or was, of that high end player you need, but the problem with him is he’s 32 and we have nothing else in place at this moment in time, our defense is a complete train wreck and our forward core is going through a transition (and lacks any other high end youth). The problem with Miller is timing. Bringing in a 32 year old makes no sense when the rest of the team is far away as we are.

And yeah I realize our owner is a dipshit but right is still right. And we don’t do things right.

 

[McRanger92]

Probably too small for our caveman GM.

Trocheck is 5’11. It’s not about height it’s how you play and Rossi isn’t afraid to go to the tough areas from what I’ve seen

 

[mas0764]

Soucy-Borgen cannot be a top-four pair. Just absolutely cannot be.

"They were a pair in Seattle!"

Seattle sucks.

If you want to go the route of getting a return for Panarin, upgrading the defense is 100% the way I would go.

If you replace Jones/Schneider with a legit upgrade, and that guy plus the remaining guy is your second pair, then it becomes not a bad defense.

They can barely be a third pair. The overrating of Borgen on here is nuts.

 

[DanielBrassard]

They can barely be a third pair. The overrating of Borgen on here is nuts.

And Chris Drury extended him for 5 years while also giving him a full no-trade clause in year one. Just a dumb contract.

 

[mas0764]

But but everyone says he’s old and not an elite player.

No one really digs on his skill. But he is an old player and won’t be relevant by time our team is ready to win.

 

[mas0764]

View attachment 1030200

This is a fun stat LMAO

Does stuff:

Miller
Panarin
Carrick
Kreider
Trocheck

Sometimes does stuff:

Cuylle

Does not do stuff:

Lafreniere
Zibanejad

I think most of that matches with my perception of players who are noticeable.

I feel like Lafreniere as a prospect did all the stuff. Why the hell has he turned invisible here?

 

[mas0764]

View attachment 1030200

This is a fun stat LMAO

Does stuff:

Miller
Panarin
Carrick
Kreider
Trocheck

Sometimes does stuff:

Cuylle

Does not do stuff:

Lafreniere
Zibanejad

I think most of that matches with my perception of players who are noticeable.

Concerning that our favorite targets du jour Peterka and Rossi are way worse than Lafreniere in the “does nothing” side of the list.

 

[egelband]

What happened with Gallant?

Putin!

 

[will1066]

I feel like Lafreniere as a prospect did all the stuff. Why the hell has he turned invisible here?

A young man living in NYC

 

[AirGut]

Would definitely be beneficial to try and trade that #12 for a guy like Peterka or Mason McTavish, unless Drury knows for sure that Jackson Smith will be available at #12.

 

[mas0764]

That formula is “have good players who out perform their contracts”

and get hot at the right time.

Florida won with barkov and Reinhart down the middle. Great 1C, solid 2c. Not the best center depth.
Beat Edmonton who went mcdavid + drai
A much better 1-2.
Florida had the better goalie at times, and the better depth/defense.

Vegas beat Florida.
Eichel + karlsson beat barkov and reinhart.
And again better depth and defense beats top 6 centers.

going back further, Washington beats vegas
Backstrom and kuznetsov won a cup.


you need specific pieces, but overall the goal is to be better than your opponent for 16 games.
If you can tie up the top 6 lines, and draw those. Then the series is decided by depth and goaltending.

There’s no one size fits all. It’s just that top centers have a lot of impact.

Having value contracts is certainly part of a winning formula.

But you can study past winners to see how much talent they have, the Athletic has done this very thing and can roughly sketch what you need, with variance (obviously).

 

[mas0764]

Nah, I disagree with that. Water finds its level and so does talent if there's will and mental fortitude.

I wish nothing for the best for the guy and didn't want him traded. It is what it is.

That’s pretty demonstrably false. Some teams are clearly better at developing players than others across all sports.

 

[IDvsEGO]

Having value contracts is certainly part of a winning formula.

But you can study past winners to see how much talent they have, the Athletic has done this very thing and can roughly sketch what you need, with variance (obviously).

The athletics formula is essentially

Top C
Top w
Top D
Starting goalie
Top 6F x2
Top 4D x 2

it’s a vague checklist. And if you’re strong in one spot, you can be weak in another spot

 

[mas0764]

The athletics formula is essentially

Top C
Top w
Top D
Starting goalie
Top 6F x2
Top 4D x 2

it’s a vague checklist. And if you’re strong in one spot, you can be weak in another spot

I think it’s actually a second 1st pair D, but yeah.

Of course “top C” or whatnot comes with a grade and ours never grade out sufficiently .

 

[3rd Guy High]

Is Eichel the better player? Sure. But you can do worse down the middle than Miller/Mika/Trocheck.

Problem is they are going to slap Mika on Millers wing because he can’t (won’t?) play defense or go to the dirty areas of the ice so they need Miller to carry his 8.5m burning hole in the roster.

Teams with 8.5m holes on their roster don’t win. This is a Mitch Marner situation we are talking about, not Mark Stone on the wing…

 

[GoAwayPanarin]

Fair point regarding “sometimes you can’t see an elite player or an elite performance coming till it happens,” but because it’s noticeable after the fact, you better be in the business of getting players you think can play at that elite level.

Maybe Eichel wasn’t a sure thing to reach that level till he did, but he was always a better bet than Mika.

Mika's had a post season run that was as productive as Eichel's cup winning season so my point still stands. You can't just apply labels to guys and be like "here is the formula! If you don't have most of these components, you're f***ed!"

2022 actually had 3 guys basically doing elite shit (Zibanejad, Fox, Igor) plus a 10 goal run from Kreider. From a pure output standpoint, that team produced more like a conference finalist and contender than the 2024 team did (the 2024 team was objectively better.)

Whether or not he can do it now is a valid question that I'm pretty sure we have the answer to, but the point is he's done it before despite not being "elite" and he's not the only one who ever has.

We've seen the inverse too where the guy who is supposed to be "elite" has been so far from it.

One thing @Machinehead has always preached that I do agree with is that roster construction doesn't have to be complicated - Minimize/remove the landmines and fill your roster with mostly decent to good players to support hopefully 2-3 great (or better) ones. It's obviously more nuanced than that but doing that alone will get you a team that is good and if you have a few guys beyond the great ones who can elevate their game at the right time, thats a contender (provided your great players don't completely shrink under the lights.)

 

[tlk]

For example, no one on the planet would have tagged Eichel as a true cup caliber #1C before he won

This is factually untrue.

 

[tlk]

Maybe Eichel wasn’t a sure thing to reach that level till he did

He absolutely was.