Speculation: Roster Building Thread: Part XXXIX

[Beacon]

The idea that you can precisely predict where the Rangers will finish with or without Panarin is comical.

Nobody is ever saying you can predict next year exactly. Nobody. The point is that there's zero reason to believe this team can contend quickly. Obviously if Kakko becomes Jagr, Chytil & Kravtsov become Weight and Amonte, K'Andre is Chelios, Shesterkin is Lundqvist, then yes, things can turn around quickly. But the odds are incredibly low that even 1 of these happen.

We need to know if Kravtsov is Amonte or Butcher or Dawes. We need to know if Shesterkin is Lundqvist or Cloutier or Asplund. Hell, we dont even know if Kakko is just another 50 point winger in his prime or a 95 point superstar.

When we had Buchnevich and Duclair as prospects, who thought one will be a middle-6 guy and the other will outright suck? Who thought 30-goal Prucha and Dawes will turn into nothing? Remember the hype around Immonen and Balej? Brendl and Lundmark? Dube and Cherneski? The last time both our top forward prospects became great players were Weight and Amonte three decades ago... and we traded them for three middle-6 veterans.

Let's figure out what we have before we start signing UFAs.

 

[Edge]

I can’t wait to see who we’ll be debating about this time next year.

 

[Beacon]

I can’t wait to see who we’ll be debating about this time next year.

We'll be demanding more forwards drafted very early because Kravtsov is a bust for scoring only 26 points as a rookie teenager instead of the expected 55 points.

 

[SA16]

At the 2021 TDL, Staal will bring back a second rounder because his cap hit and term will be minimal by then. For the next 1.5 seasons, who cares, the cap isn't a problem.

Speaking of which, the desire to give up picks or cap space to get rid of Staal and Smith proves that nobody wants to acquire Panarin or another expensive UFA just because they want vet leadership. Staal has a ton of great experience and he did it in as Rangers jersey. The desire to throw away picks and cap space to replace Staal with Panarin is nothing but the desire to sacrifice future Cup chances just to wind up 9th in the East instead of 14th.

Getting a second round pick for Staal two years from now seems extremely optimistic. He's not very good now and will most likely be even worse then.

 

[RangerBlues]

I hope the Rangers have a pair of coins like the Giants do.

 

[duhmetreE]

I can’t wait to see who we’ll be debating about this time next year.

We'll be in the playoffs

 

[RangerBlues]

Not even sure if there will be a season. Both sides can opt out in september.

 

[East Coast Bias]

I can’t wait to see who we’ll be debating about this time next year.

Well depending on how these playoffs work out, “the only way to win” crowd will have changed the formula a few times.

It’s only took a year for it to go from you have to have elite forwards, to you have to have elite defense and goalies.

You just need a hot goalie to you need a great goalie.

You gotta win when your young guys are on ELCs to you won’t even know what you have till their 2nd contract.

More to come. Long playoff left.

 

[Beacon]

Chris Drury, Scott Gomez make Rangers beasts of East

Here's an article about how different it will be with Gomez and Drury. After all, Gomez is only 27 and Drury just does everything. Two years later, at the age of 29, the Rangers traded Gomez. They lucked into stealing McDonagh, which is now seen as a huge steal, but at the time of the trade, everyone kind of viewed it as Gomez for Higgins, a third liner, and everyone was very excited. The rumor was that that Habs soured on McDonagh as a prospect and he will be at best a 4-5D, but nobody cared, everyone was happy just to get rid of Gomez. In the run up to the trade, most of the people here were proposing to pay someone just to take either Drury or Gomez off our hands. That's just in the second year of their deal. UFAs suck. You don't build a team with them. How many times does this experiment have to fail for people to learn this lesson? But no, this time it will be different. "All the past UFAs were awful, but this next one, omg omg omg, he will be so good til he's 36 years old."

 

[Shesterkybomb]

Chris Drury, Scott Gomez make Rangers beasts of East

Here's an article about how different it will be with Gomez and Drury. After all, Gomez is only 27 and Drury just does everything. Two years later, at the age of 29, the Rangers traded Gomez. They lucked into stealing McDonagh, which is now seen as a huge steal, but at the time of the trade, everyone kind of viewed it as Gomez for Higgins, a third liner, and everyone was very excited. The rumor was that that Habs soured on McDonagh as a prospect and he will be at best a 4-5D, but nobody cared, everyone was happy just to get rid of Gomez. In the run up to the trade, most of the people here were proposing to pay someone just to take either Drury or Gomez off our hands. That's just in the second year of their deal. UFAs suck. You don't build a team with them. How many times does this experiment have to fail for people to learn this lesson? But no, this time it will be different. "All the past UFAs were awful, but this next one, omg omg omg, he will be so good til he's 36 years old."

I'm good with either getting Panarin or not but seriously, the talent difference between him and either of those guys is night and day. The GM basically paid Gomez because he felt that when he was removed from NJ's trap system he would get even more points,it was a terrible gamble that failed miserably. Drury even at that point was considered more of a playoff player than anything. Panarin is on his 2nd team,the first he was on with Kane and worked wonderfully there, the 2nd team he is on more of a workman like team with Tortorella and it's working great there too. There is absolutely no reason why he wouldnt work in NY. Will he work well for 5 years, 6 years or 7 years who really knows but he would be a nice compliment to our pp and would give us another option for our top 6. Like I said before I'm good either way but I'd take him if he is 10 mill or less but it wouldnt bother me if we passed either.

 

[Bob Richards]

Well depending on how these playoffs work out, “the only way to win” crowd will have changed the formula a few times.

It’s only took a year for it to go from you have to have elite forwards, to you have to have elite defense and goalies.

You just need a hot goalie to you need a great goalie.

You gotta win when your young guys are on ELCs to you won’t even know what you have till their 2nd contract.

More to come. Long playoff left.

Someone on here said it really well not too long ago.

It was something along the lines of how once the rest of the league agrees upon the winning strategy, it's immediately in the rear-view of a team that creates the brand new one.

 

[Ola]

Well depending on how these playoffs work out, “the only way to win” crowd will have changed the formula a few times.

It’s only took a year for it to go from you have to have elite forwards, to you have to have elite defense and goalies.

You just need a hot goalie to you need a great goalie.

You gotta win when your young guys are on ELCs to you won’t even know what you have till their 2nd contract.

More to come. Long playoff left.

Great point!

 

[Michal]

Possibly K'Andre? But I think he may be overrated here. I'd be pretty surprised if he became as good as Leetch. Maybe as good as Mcdonagh, but even that is unlikely at this point.

From 2017 to 2019, we used 3 top-10 picks on forwards. We sent away our best center (Brassard) for a young forward (Zibanejad). We got a forward former first rounder (Howden) as the best asset for our captain. We drafted Chytil and Butcher.

Our top D pick is #22. We acquired a few D prospects, but none are elite in any sense. There's no Kakko, not even Chytil or Kravtsov among our blue liners in terms of their ceiling.

That's why after Kakko, we should use our next couple of picks on defensemen, particularly RDs. They dont have giddy stats, but defensemen are more important to winning than forwards.

It's going to be a long rebuild (4-6 years from now?) if we haven't even drafted our best d-man yet

 

[Mac n Gs]

I can’t wait to see who we’ll be debating about this time next year.

I'm already mad about the 4th liner we'll be signing to fill in depth.

 

[haohmaru]

Chris Drury, Scott Gomez make Rangers beasts of East

Here's an article about how different it will be with Gomez and Drury. After all, Gomez is only 27 and Drury just does everything. Two years later, at the age of 29, the Rangers traded Gomez. They lucked into stealing McDonagh, which is now seen as a huge steal, but at the time of the trade, everyone kind of viewed it as Gomez for Higgins, a third liner, and everyone was very excited. The rumor was that that Habs soured on McDonagh as a prospect and he will be at best a 4-5D, but nobody cared, everyone was happy just to get rid of Gomez. In the run up to the trade, most of the people here were proposing to pay someone just to take either Drury or Gomez off our hands. That's just in the second year of their deal. UFAs suck. You don't build a team with them. How many times does this experiment have to fail for people to learn this lesson? But no, this time it will be different. "All the past UFAs were awful, but this next one, omg omg omg, he will be so good til he's 36 years old."

Gomez and Drury were supposed to put us over the top which is completely different than adding to the beginning stages of a rebuild. There's not a lot of history to look back at when it comes to the Rangers completely tearing it down and starting over, but Gomez and Drury is about the worst comparison to make. The situations and players aren't similar.

 

[Tawnos]

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Pro-Panarin poster: We aren’t talking about building around Panarin... just adding him to the prospects that will be the core of this team.

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Pro-Panarin poster: ...

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

 

[DutchShamrock]

Whoever it is, players like him are almost never available.

 

[eco's bones]

It's amazing. If we sign one free agent--there goes the rebuild. All those draft picks then will never get any ice time. They'll all shrivel up and die. Even so they might be no good anyway. Another message is we need to bottom out for one more season which sounds kind of like last year's message. Maybe it will be next year's too. I can see moving Kreider but I'd be looking to replace him and with something better if I could. But if you want to bottom out all the way--be one of the bottom 3--well f*** it--do it all the way then. Move along Zibanejad and Skjei too--and why put Mika through this bullshit anyway? It ain't going to be fun for him spending the next couple seasons getting all the pieces into place and then two or three more getting those pieces up to speed by which time we'll probably have shipped him off anyway.

No one who had any clue thought that Higgins was a better player than Gomez. At least most knew that McDonagh was the key piece in that deal.

K'Andre Miller is not going to be Leetch or Chelios. He doesn't play like either. He's more like Seth Jones--tall, rangy, fast, physical with some offensive ability. Do the draft over again and I think he goes higher--he was having a really good year before his injury.

Kravtsov also might go earlier if that draft were done again. He had a really good KHL year for a low scoring team. Do I expect 50 points from him this year?--well if he's in Hartford and stays healthy--probably. If he's with the Rangers--probably not.

Kakko's expected to make the leap right off. There's no reason to believe he can't do what Svechnikov, Kotkaniemi or Tkachuk did last year. He was more impressive in Liiga than Kotkaniemi for instance. Will he be a superstar right out of the gate? I don't think so.

But yeah the coaching staff is going to have to figure out what these kids are capable of whenever it is they get here. Having some structure though will help. Having talented guys like Zibanejad and dare I say Panarin will help and not hinder them.

I get it--some people are glass half empty people. They're always going to look at things in a negative light and sometimes it's almost like the Rangers are being punished for some unspecified unarticulated sin. There's nothing set in stone about the way a team goes about reinventing itself. We're not religiously following some script to get to some end. The Stanley Cup isn't the Holy Grail--it's a f***ing cup. No one knows where the Grail is.

 

[haohmaru]

Nobody is ever saying you can predict next year exactly. Nobody. The point is that there's zero reason to believe this team can contend quickly. Obviously if Kakko becomes Jagr, Chytil & Kravtsov become Weight and Amonte, K'Andre is Chelios, Shesterkin is Lundqvist, then yes, things can turn around quickly. But the odds are incredibly low that even 1 of these happen.

We need to know if Kravtsov is Amonte or Butcher or Dawes. We need to know if Shesterkin is Lundqvist or Cloutier or Asplund. Hell, we dont even know if Kakko is just another 50 point winger in his prime or a 95 point superstar.

When we had Buchnevich and Duclair as prospects, who thought one will be a middle-6 guy and the other will outright suck? Who thought 30-goal Prucha and Dawes will turn into nothing? Remember the hype around Immonen and Balej? Brendl and Lundmark? Dube and Cherneski? The last time both our top forward prospects became great players were Weight and Amonte three decades ago... and we traded them for three middle-6 veterans.

Let's figure out what we have before we start signing UFAs.

Well, you did (9th & 14th) but our posts on the subject are gone for some reason. IDK.

IDK, I guess your views are a little more pessimistic than mine are. I'm looking at teams like Carolina and the Islanders and thinking that our roster can be of similar talent in another year. We'll see.

Let's remember, too, that if the Stanley Cup is your metric of success, then 96+% of NHL teams fail every year.

Only two teams in the NHL have won in consecutive first rounds in consecutive years. The salary cap, and the parity that goes along with it, makes roster building and playoff success pretty difficult to predict.

 

[egelband]

How did Boston beat them? They don't have any 10-11M cap hit players, and the few that could maybe command that level of cap hit seem to have signed for less. Somehow even Pastrnak who put up 70 in his last entry level contract year signed just last year to 6.6M. Possible he was more willing to do so because he did not see Boston spend 11M on anyone else?

Good point. Actually seems to me this is the rangers m-o. Top guys in the 6-7m range and maintain cap flexibility.

 

[TheBloodyNine]

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Pro-Panarin poster: We aren’t talking about building around Panarin... just adding him to the prospects that will be the core of this team.

Anti-Panarin poster: You can't pay a player 11 million dollars and not have that be building around him.

Pro-Panarin poster: ...

More accurate

 

[Bleed Ranger Blue]

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Pro-Panarin poster: We aren’t talking about building around Panarin... just adding him to the prospects that will be the core of this team.

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Pro-Panarin poster: ...

Anti-Panarin poster: You can’t build around UFAs.

Ha. Nice. I think an underlying fear of giving Panarin such a big contract is that, down the line, the Rangers younger players will be up for raises around the same time and Panarin's cap hit could be a road block.

My answer to that is who cares. It'd be a great problem to have

 

[egelband]

I don't know how many times this has to be said.

None of his injuries are related to eachother. They are just not, in any way, shape, or form compounded or chronic injuries.

Zib just played his first full season because of two freak injuries over the last 2 years. Is he injury prone, too? because that's the same argument you are making against Trouba, and it doesn't hold water in this context.

Trouba's fine. He's just too expensive.

 

[egelband]

Had her posters all over my room back then. My mom hated it lol

Who? Kathy Ireland? Jacqueline Smith?

 

[Off Sides]

Good point. Actually seems to me this is the rangers m-o. Top guys in the 6-7m range and maintain cap flexibility.

I'm not trying to say there is any blueprint, more so given where the Rangers are, I believe if it's not ideal, why not just go cheaper and shorter term?

Sure in some cases teams are faced with two non ideal options, they want to compete, Rangers will get there. In the mean time I believe they should just stay flexible until they have a better idea what they have. I think a large part of team building is avoiding mistakes. Maybe a better way to put it, in hockey 4 years is a long time to deal with any mistakes, 5, 6, 7 years is a really long time.

The risk of decline, injury, poor play, bad fit... I think they should be looking for lower risk stuff. There are several events that are right on the horizon, expansion, the CBA, large contracts coming off the books, they have the #2 pick, picks beyond that, they actually have a promising prospect pool, many of which are on the cusp of the NHL, I think they should let that play out before they decide to commit to much of anything long term.