Roster Building Thread V (2022-23): Cheese and WINE

[Kovalev27]

Both Kakko or Laf were the consensus pick.
I don’t consider those misses because then everyone was missing…

Yah those are not the ones u get upset about. And I think lafreniere is a ppg in a couple years I really do.

Kakko doesn’t want to be. He’s afraid to go to the net. He doesn’t skate well so he’s lost a ton of confidence from that. Game just is much faster than he wants it to be. But he doesn’t want to go to the net. That’s his fault. But he needs to stop carrying the puck. Move it to chytil or laf and get ready to get it back once in the zone. That’s the best thing he can do for himself.

 

[McRanger92]

Yah those are not the ones u get upset about. And I think lafreniere is a ppg in a couple years I really do.

Kakko doesn’t want to be. He’s afraid to go to the net. He doesn’t skate well so he’s lost a ton of confidence from that. Game just is much faster than he wants it to be. But he doesn’t want to go to the net. That’s his fault. But he needs to stop carrying the puck. Move it to chytil or laf and get ready to get it back once in the zone. That’s the best thing he can do for himself.

I think Lafreniere is well on his way to scoring 30 goals a year consistently if we just give it time. He's very good around the net for a young player and has a scoring touch that Kakko has never shown.

 

[PuckLuck3043]

It’s worth noting that most of this board was willing to ship Chytil out for next to nothing in the middle of last season. And there were plenty of people calling for Miller to be demoted as recently as this season. Sometimes players take a step back before taking several steps forward.

This. This board is so damn impatient. It the guy isn't lighting it up by the ripe old age of 22 then he's a bust. Schneider, Laf, Kakko are all 21-22. Chytil and Miller are both 23 and enjoying their most productive seasons so far. Funny how that works.

 

[IronBloodedLion]

Yah those are not the ones u get upset about. And I think lafreniere is a ppg in a couple years I really do.

Kakko doesn’t want to be. He’s afraid to go to the net. He doesn’t skate well so he’s lost a ton of confidence from that. Game just is much faster than he wants it to be. But he doesn’t want to go to the net. That’s his fault. But he needs to stop carrying the puck. Move it to chytil or laf and get ready to get it back once in the zone. That’s the best thing he can do for himself.

Which is funny too considering how many of Kakko’s goals come from going to the net. It really is the difference between him producing or not. He’s always looking for that one extra pass, when he really should use his size and strength to drive the next or just take a shot.

If there’s one thing that’s consistent about our young forwards though it’s that they’re wildly inconsistent.

 

[Machinehead]

This and this. They've had plenty of opportunity. Neither of them grabbed the brass ring and seized a top 6 spot despite given multiple chances. As the GM, Drury's job is to win the Stanley Cup. He's doing his job by giving the team the best chance to do it after acquiring Tarasenko and Mikkola and having Patrick Kane fall out of the blue sky for almost nothing. He wouldn't have made the trades if he believed that the team was good as is.

It's not that Gorton's regime scouted badly. Lafreniere and Kakko were consensus picks in their draft slots. It's partly that patented Rangers luck but mostly bad player development that landed the team in the situation they are in now. David Quinn should go down in history as one of this organization's biggest pariahs. Kakko and Lafreniere needed steady and experienced hands behind the bench that nurtured their strengths. He told both of them to go out there and play like 3rd line grinders and be responsible players and made them grip their sticks so tight to the point that they were petrified of making mistakes for fear of being stapled to the bench. Yeah, you can make the case that neither of them were really talented (I buy it for Lafreniere but absolutely do not for Kakko. He looked like the second coming of Marian Hossa the World Championship tournament before his draft absolutely dunking on NHL players and making them look like fools), but Quinn shattered whatever confidence either of them had their first year in the league. Then you stumble ass backwards into Panarin and try to rebuild on the fly to the point that neither would ever have a significant role to play, and before you know it, both are buried.

There's going to be some really interesting conversations and decisions that are going to have to be made this summer and next. Lafreniere just wasn't that good to begin with and Kakko is a headcase. Honestly, I'm ready to trade both at the draft for 2023 1st's. Go 2011 Philly on both their asses like when they traded both Mike Richards and Jeff Carter in the same offseason. The Panarin/Trouba/Kreider window is open now and for the next two years (I think Kane signs back here cheap too). Draft well this year and next and you have those 2023 1st's ready to make the team as soon as the Rangers need to retool summer of 2025.

The more time that passes, the more I feel Quinn was an epic failure in his role. He was the coach before the coach. He was the guy that was supposed to run the rebuild. At the end of the day, what did his regime get out of drafted and developed Rangers prospects? Mostly butkus. That was the window to develop and they didn't do it successfully. You could argue Lafreniere was never not on a decent Rangers team, but he absolutely had Kakko when the Rangers sucked and had license to focus on development, and still did nothing with him. As @eyjee, God rest his soul, used to say, you can make anybody a 4th liner if that's how you coach them.

I have my differences with Gallant but the Rangers absolutely hired him at the right time as a contender coach. Shesterkin walked into the NHL a Vezina winner, a Hall of Fame defensemen fell from the sky, an all-NHL wing took a discount to come here, Kreider took a step forward at 30, and Zibanejad jumped up like two tiers. What were the Rangers supposed to do? Say "no thank you" and continue tanking?

The rebuild ended itself because we had a string of obscene luck with veteran players and older prospects like Fox and Igor. If that hurt the kids, then it is what it is. If they missed their window that's on Quinn. There's nothing major I would have done differently except maybe hire somebody besides Quinn.

You don't sabotage unexpected success to continue a rebuild. Success is the point of a rebuild.

 

[duhmetreE]

Yah those are not the ones u get upset about. And I think lafreniere is a ppg in a couple years I really do.

Kakko doesn’t want to be. He’s afraid to go to the net. He doesn’t skate well so he’s lost a ton of confidence from that. Game just is much faster than he wants it to be. But he doesn’t want to go to the net. That’s his fault. But he needs to stop carrying the puck. Move it to chytil or laf and get ready to get it back once in the zone. That’s the best thing he can do for himself.

Watching Kakko come through the neutral zone with the puck is laborious

 

[IDvsEGO]

The more time that passes, the more I feel Quinn was an epic failure in his role. He was the coach before the coach. He was the guy that was supposed to run the rebuild. At the end of the day, what did his regime get out of drafted and developed Rangers prospects? Mostly butkus. That was the window to develop and they didn't do it successfully. You could argue Lafreniere was never not on a decent Rangers team, but he absolutely had Kakko when the Rangers sucked and had license to focus on development, and still did nothing with him. As @eyjee, God rest his soul, used to say, you can make anybody a 4th liner if that's how you coach them.

I have my differences with Gallant but the Rangers absolutely hired him at the right time as a contender coach. Shesterkin walked into the NHL a Vezina winner, a Hall of Fame defensemen fell from the sky, an all-NHL wing took a discount to come here, Kreider took a step forward at 30, and Zibanejad jumped up like two tiers. What were the Rangers supposed to do? Say "no thank you" and continue tanking?

The rebuild ended itself because we had a string of obscene luck with veteran players and older prospects like Fox and Igor. If that hurt the kids, then it is what it is. If they missed their window that's on Quinn. There's nothing major I would have done differently except maybe hire somebody besides Quinn.

You don't sabotage unexpected success to continue a rebuild. Success is the point of a rebuild.

Quinn at one point talked about how he was there to win games, and he basically sounded like gallant how he wasn't responsible to develop the kids.
Someone needed to tell quinn, if you wanted to win games you need to develop laf and kakko.

He gave kakko something like 5 games on the top line with panarin and mika.

He gave him like 2 games on the power play.

He gave laf like 5 games on the top. and absolutely no power play time.


As much as i really dislike gallant's handling of the kids, the past two nights the kids got heavy power play usage. and they looked strong.
I legit think we're going to go from one window to another.

Kakko won't be panarin, but laf will be. Chytil won't be mika but he'll be damn close. And kakko will be better than CK.

 

[Machinehead]

Quinn at one point talked about how he was there to win games, and he basically sounded like gallant how he wasn't responsible to develop the kids.
Someone needed to tell quinn, if you wanted to win games you need to develop laf and kakko.

He gave kakko something like 5 games on the top line with panarin and mika.

He gave him like 2 games on the power play.

He gave laf like 5 games on the top. and absolutely no power play time.


As much as i really dislike gallant's handling of the kids, the past two nights the kids got heavy power play usage. and they looked strong.
I legit think we're going to go from one window to another.

Kakko won't be panarin, but laf will be. Chytil won't be mika but he'll be damn close. And kakko will be better than CK.

I understand that what you say to the media isn't always meaningful, and no coach is going to admit he's there to lose, but when Quinn says it, I absolutely believe him.

We all knew what he was here to do but this was his shot in the NHL and he set out to win games.

When Gallant says it, sorry to say, he's absolutely correct.

 

[Kovalev27]

The more time that passes, the more I feel Quinn was an epic failure in his role. He was the coach before the coach. He was the guy that was supposed to run the rebuild. At the end of the day, what did his regime get out of drafted and developed Rangers prospects? Mostly butkus. That was the window to develop and they didn't do it successfully. You could argue Lafreniere was never not on a decent Rangers team, but he absolutely had Kakko when the Rangers sucked and had license to focus on development, and still did nothing with him. As @eyjee, God rest his soul, used to say, you can make anybody a 4th liner if that's how you coach them.

I have my differences with Gallant but the Rangers absolutely hired him at the right time as a contender coach. Shesterkin walked into the NHL a Vezina winner, a Hall of Fame defensemen fell from the sky, an all-NHL wing took a discount to come here, Kreider took a step forward at 30, and Zibanejad jumped up like two tiers. What were the Rangers supposed to do? Say "no thank you" and continue tanking?

The rebuild ended itself because we had a string of obscene luck with veteran players and older prospects like Fox and Igor. If that hurt the kids, then it is what it is. If they missed their window that's on Quinn. There's nothing major I would have done differently except maybe hire somebody besides Quinn.

You don't sabotage unexpected success to continue a rebuild. Success is the point of a rebuild.

David Quinn is not an nhl coach. I’d argue he’s not an ahl coach or college coach either. He was terrible in every way

 

[McRanger92]

Quinn at one point talked about how he was there to win games, and he basically sounded like gallant how he wasn't responsible to develop the kids.
Someone needed to tell quinn, if you wanted to win games you need to develop laf and kakko.

He gave kakko something like 5 games on the top line with panarin and mika.

He gave him like 2 games on the power play.

He gave laf like 5 games on the top. and absolutely no power play time.


As much as i really dislike gallant's handling of the kids, the past two nights the kids got heavy power play usage. and they looked strong.
I legit think we're going to go from one window to another.

Kakko won't be panarin, but laf will be. Chytil won't be mika but he'll be damn close. And kakko will be better than CK.

I dont totally disagree with the sentiment of the overall post the but cmon with this. Not fair to say the Kids are going to better or equal to 3 of the best forwards in Ranger history.

 

[duhmetreE]

As much as i really dislike gallant's handling of the kids, the past two nights the kids got heavy power play usage. and they looked strong.
I legit think we're going to go from one window to another.

Kakko won't be panarin, but laf will be. Chytil won't be mika but he'll be damn close. And kakko will be better than CK.

Well, Kreider and Zibs will be here for the long haul IMO.

 

[Machinehead]

I only hope that any major forward prospect we draft has the career Chris Kreider has had.

He's gonna score 400 goals. Like a hundred or so guys have done that in hockey history.

 

[Kovalev27]

Why would we give up on a promising 22 year old for a couple of the tail end years of Kane’s career? When the rumor being pushed was one of Kakko or Lafreniere for Kane, we laughed at it. But now we’re willing to ship out Kakko to keep Kane?

Kane’s appeal, and the reason why he’s here, is that he was cheap to acquire. He forced his way here and came at a bargain. If he’s willing to take a sweetheart deal to stay, then fine, but if we have to ship out quality assets to keep him, then he’s no longer a bargain.

Because it’s not giving up on them it’s trying to win a Cup in a REAL window when u have arguably the best top 6 in the league a vezina winner and a Norris winner. It’s not about the kids right now.

Kakko is not worth hurting that opportunity in anyway. I’m old enough to know these windows don’t come around often. Even if you rebuild forever. Plenty of teams do that and go nowhere. You need the right mix at exactly the right time.

I’d trade any and all of lindgren Goodrow kakko and very last even chytil as painful as that would be, if it meant getting Tarasenko to stay and Kane on a short 2 or 3 year contract. And I’d get plenty of assets back in the process for that next window.

Lindgren we feel it when he’s out but we’d figure it out eventually. We already are quite frankly. What’d we just go 8-2-1 with him out? Fox too good not to figure it out eventually. I don’t want lindgren Long term.

 

[Fitzy]

This. This board is so damn impatient. It the guy isn't lighting it up by the ripe old age of 22 then he's a bust. Schneider, Laf, Kakko are all 21-22. Chytil and Miller are both 23 and enjoying their most productive seasons so far. Funny how that works.

I mean, there's 4 moving parts here.

1) Lad and Kakko have developed slower than expected and their ceilings have dropped from an estimated 90 and 70 points to, more realistically, 70 and 55.

2) Kakko and Laf were the obvious draft choices in their respective slots. I wish we had traded down for Stutzle obviously but thats hindsight. Like 90% of GMS would have picked the same guys where they were.

3) Kakko and Laf would be scoring a bit more if they were in a situation more resembling the rosters of teams that typically win the lottery. (Remember how slow Adam Larsson's start to his career was, or the Sedin twins)

4) Impatience aside, many high draft picks are at least close to their ceilings at 22-23. Gretz's best seasons were 22, 23,24.

And then to do a General Turdgeson and just prattle on

5) The 3rd line roles for Kakko Laf and Chytil may have suppressed their offense, but does allow us to keep their RFA AAVs down at a time when we are facing severe austerity.

6) We will know for sure what the kids are by the time we have to make decisions on Trouba, Panarin, Kreider, ect. So the 'we don't know how good they will be' argument to me should be settles by summers of 2024 and 2025.


In any event, this team we have today is built to win a f***ing Stanley Cup, so to quote Keynes, in the long run we're all dead

 

[Kovalev27]

I can also count on about 3 fingers how many times we’ve had a top line as talented as Panarin Mika Tarasenko in about 100 years. I’m not losing that

 

[IDvsEGO]

I dont totally disagree with the sentiment of the overall post the but cmon with this. Not fair to say the Kids are going to better or equal to 3 of the best forwards in Ranger history.

Laf is a former first overall pick, who were all basically saying looks like he should be able to get to 30-70 with more time.

I said chytil wouldn't get entirely to mika, but look at their career's overlapping, chytil's numbers look very similar.

And Kakko is on pace for 40 points at 21 years old. at 21 for CK he was still playing in college, and at 22 years old he only had 46 points...

CK never had more than 29 goals until last year (his age 30 season).

I think Kakko can get past 30 goals easily enough with more ice time. And he's already a stronger defensive player than CK.

 

[McRanger92]

Because it’s not giving up on them it’s trying to win a Cup in a REAL window when u have arguably the best top 6 in the league a vezina winner and a Norris winner. It’s not about the kids right now.

Kakko is not worth hurting that opportunity in anyway. I’m old enough to know these windows don’t come around often. Even if you rebuild forever. Plenty of teams do that and go nowhere. You need the right mix at exactly the right time.

I’d trade any and all of lindgren Goodrow kakko and very last even chytil as painful as that would be, if it meant getting Tarasenko to stay and Kane on a short 2 or 3 year contract. And I’d get plenty of assets back in the process for that next window.

Lindgren we feel it when he’s out but we’d figure it out eventually. We already are quite frankly. What’d we just go 8-2-1 with him out? Fox too good not to figure it out eventually. I don’t want lindgren Long term.

They cannot make the same mistake with Lindgren that they made with Staal and Girardi. I know Lindy is younger so the situations arent perfectly similar but we cant give another big contract to a defensive defenseman who has 1 goal this year. And I love this guy, but some bubble team or one looking to make the jump into the playoffs would deal some good assets for him at 3M and an upcoming RFA. The endgame has to be Miller & Fox playing together on a pairing, and I'll go even further and say the plan probably is to play the undersized Jones with Trouba once Zac gets the necessary seasoning.

 

[McRanger92]

Laf is a former first overall pick, who were all basically saying looks like he should be able to get to 30-70 with more time.

I said chytil wouldn't get entirely to mika, but look at their career's overlapping, chytil's numbers look very similar.

And Kakko is on pace for 40 points at 21 years old. at 21 for CK he was still playing in college, and at 22 years old he only had 46 points...

CK never had more than 29 goals until last year (his age 30 season).

I think Kakko can get past 30 goals easily enough with more ice time. And he's already a stronger defensive player than CK.

Who is saying Lafreniere is looking like a future 100 point player lol? 30-30 guy who plays with an edge maybe, but I'd be shocked if he ever cracked 90-100 outside of a freak outlier. Chytil has the deadly scoring touch Mika does but he has miles and miles to go to ever come close to Mika's(or Trocheck's for that matter) all around game. And how is Kakko going to score 30 goals without shooting? Try to keep your expectations in check at least, because now youre making me loook like I dont like the Kids haha

 

[IronBloodedLion]

Kakko for his struggles he’s cheap this year and next year. Even if you trade him for cap space you still have to sign someone to replace him considering how weak the team would be at RW. I do think we should do what we can to keep Tarasenko. This is the best 1st line we’ve had in so long. Think about how much better they would be with a full year together.

Goodrow is clearly an odd man out.

 

[Machinehead]

I mean it is worth noting that Fox debuted at 21, Zibanejad broke out at 25 and became an even better player at 28, and Kreider is going to be 32 next month and we're just now realizing that "hey, wow, this guy's had an awesome career."

If you told people after Zibanejad's D+7 that he would be a 90 point center and score 40 goals twice, you would be in spongy room.

You just don't know what happens down the road.

Then again, Filip Chytil's D+7 is next year and life comes at you fast. I understand that aspect of it as well.

Point is, we should do what's best for the team in this window because we still don't know what anybody's ceiling is.

 

[Savant]

Why are we complaining right now

 

[Kovalev27]

I actually would keep miller and Fox separate. I want one of them on the ice for 45 46 mins every night.

Fox doesn’t need a stud next to him. He’s struggling a bit without his buddy but he’s a Norris Dman he will figure it out. Leetch played with Beuk. Who with probably anyone else would have struggled mightily.

But we’re getting a good sample right now. Took a few games but the team is humming without lindgren just fine. Not a guy you lose a Tarasenko over or a Kane. Your top line is much more important. I’d probably move lindgren Goodrow and Kakko to keep Kane and Tarasenko. And not bat an eye

Vesey move up Othmann maybe. You’d never know kakko wasn’t here that I can tell u

Chytil is the guy you’d regret in a couple years no question but if you win a Cup? Tough

 

[Pawnee Rangers]

These kids aren't finished products. Not even close. Sure, they're development wasn't typical of guys taken 1 & 2 OA but whatever. Don't touch that line. Let them go through this postseason together again. Evaluate after.

 

[Machinehead]

Mika March except March has been low-key going on for like 30 months.

182 points in his last 171 games.

 

[McRanger92]

Kakko for his struggles he’s cheap this year and next year. Even if you trade him for cap space you still have to sign someone to replace him considering how weak the team would be at RW. I do think we should do what we can to keep Tarasenko. This is the best 1st line we’ve had in so long. Think about how much better they would be with a full year together.

Goodrow is clearly an odd man out.

Kakko turns into Cullye+~1st round pick+ 1 mil in cap space. Thats a win for the "Tuffness" crowd, "Generational draft" crowd and the "Keep Vlad/Kane" Crowd.