Toggle sidebar

Team of the Decade: 3rd Pair LD

  • Xenforo Cloud will be upgrading us to version 2.3.5 on March 3rd at 12 AM GMT. This version has increased stability and fixes several bugs. We expect downtime for the duration of the update. The admin team will continue to work on existing issues, templates and upgrade all necessary available addons to minimize impact of this new version. Click Here for Updates

3rd Pair LD

  • Total voters
    123
  • Poll closed .
If longevity is a heavy factor for you, I understand Skjei. He's clearly been here for years, spanning 2 eras (competing vs tanking).

But if we're talking about peak output? Yandle for me. Yandle played about 4-5 mins less here than Phoenix or Florida. He put up a 47 pt season as a dman, on the smallest TOI since he was 21. People are losing their minds over Tony D potentially hitting 50 pts. Yandle has done it routinely, for a decade across several teams, and almost did it here despite not getting top time.
 
East Coast Bias said:
If longevity is a heavy factor for you, I understand Skjei. He's clearly been here for years, spanning 2 eras (competing vs tanking).

But if we're talking about peak output? Yandle for me. Yandle played about 4-5 mins less here than Phoenix or Florida. He put up a 47 pt season as a dman, on the smallest TOI since he was 21. People are losing their minds over Tony D potentially hitting 50 pts. Yandle has done it routinely, for a decade across several teams, and almost did it here despite not getting top time.
Click to expand...

But based on that approach, Skjei had a season where he had just as many goals, and only 8 less points (all assists), while playing two-and-a-half minutes less per game (or roughly 13 percent less), and two less games overall. I believe the advanced stats show them to be pretty close as well.

So isolated "peaks" while playing for the Rangers are not really night and day. They're actually really close. Probably as close as a 5 goal/47 point season for Yandle's best vs. a 6 goal/45 point season for Skjei's best if we even out the ice time and games played.

But if we go beyond just a one season isolation, Yandle only played 21 additional regular season games for this team. Skjei has played nearly 200 more beyond that peak season.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Crease and LokiDog
If this stays within five votes I'll do a tiebreaker. Enough mdz votes to justify it.
 
EdJovanovski said:
I don’t get why we’d vote based on what could’ve should’ve happened lol
I vote Skjei
Click to expand...
People dont want to admit to themselves they were wrong about yandle.

It helps that they have AV and his abject imbecility to lean on. They also get to see skjei exposed by being forced into a role well above his talent level which we didn't get to see with yandle
 
shinchanuuhh said:
People dont want to admit to themselves they were wrong about yandle.

It helps that they have AV and his abject imbecility to lean on. They also get to see skjei exposed by being forced into a role well above his talent level which we didn't get to see with yandle
Click to expand...
Yea and we could use the same argument that Skjei is playing over his head and not in a position to succeed because of his deployment and an incompetent Ruff as well
 
shinchanuuhh said:
People dont want to admit to themselves they were wrong about yandle.

It helps that they have AV and his abject imbecility to lean on. They also get to see skjei exposed by being forced into a role well above his talent level which we didn't get to see with yandle
Click to expand...
He put up 47 points playing third pair minutes.

If people were wrong about Yandle, what exactly were they saying?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rangers743
Yandle is a better hockey player. Full stop.

Skjei hasn't done enough for this organization to vote on tenure.
 
shinchanuuhh said:
People dont want to admit to themselves they were wrong about yandle.

It helps that they have AV and his abject imbecility to lean on. They also get to see skjei exposed by being forced into a role well above his talent level which we didn't get to see with yandle
Click to expand...

Wrong about what? That AV had misused a proven 50-60 point offensive d-man?

Because that did happen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Machinehead
Yandle’s stint here is just too short to really consider him on a team of the decade for me. People will forget Yandle ever played in NY when looking at his career. Skjei is only losing because he’s trending down recently and has become a whipping boy that people want to ship out. I’m fine with moving him as well, but when looking at the last decade Skjei gets my vote pretty easily.
 
Edge said:
But based on that approach, Skjei had a season where he had just as many goals, and only 8 less points (all assists), while playing two-and-a-half minutes less per game (or roughly 13 percent less), and two less games overall. I believe the advanced stats show them to be pretty close as well.

So isolated "peaks" while playing for the Rangers are not really night and day. They're actually really close. Probably as close as a 5 goal/47 point season for Yandle's best vs. a 6 goal/45 point season for Skjei's best if we even out the ice time and games played.

But if we go beyond just a one season isolation, Yandle only played 21 additional regular season games for this team. Skjei has played nearly 200 more beyond that peak season.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's fair. I didn't realize Skjei had that many points that year.

Skjei just has the feel of a tenure guy more than anything. I just don't think he's been good in a couple years now. But maybe some of that has to do with playing on teams that were way worse than Yandle, McD, G, etc played on here.
 
Machinehead said:
Yandle is a better hockey player. Full stop.

Skjei hasn't done enough for this organization to vote on tenure.
Click to expand...

Yandle was bad as a ranger! People forget so easily. I'll take Skjei for the decade and now vs. Yandle. The hate on Skjei is crazy on this board.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Maximus
East Coast Bias said:
Yeah that's fair. I didn't realize Skjei had that many points that year.

Skjei just has the feel of a tenure guy more than anything. I just don't think he's been good in a couple years now. But maybe some of that has to do with playing on teams that were way worse than Yandle, McD, G, etc played on here.
Click to expand...

For me, revisiting certain players has been an interesting experience.

For example, I was shocked that Hagelin’s numbers and Miller’s numbers were as close as they were.

Ditto for when I looked at Skjei’s best season vs. Yandle’s best season.

Our brains have a way of remembering things, categorizing information and then processing it. It’s strange when you “double check” things and find it’s not quite as clear cut as you thought. Sometimes you discover you may have a bias or two in the mix as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Crease
Sucks Yandle had a messed up shoulder in the 2015 playoffs (along with most of our d). Give him credit for toughing it out like he has most of his career.
 
Sayba said:
The same reason he was left off 2014 Team USA, and a career minus player is because he is and was a liability on defense. He did not live to the expectations offensively either running our pp.
Click to expand...
Yeah 2014 Team USA that took Paul Martin and Brooks Orpik instead. Good luck with that one.

Here's a fun fact: Yandle is a career plus at 5-on-5. I absolutely kid you not. 619 goals for, 589 goals against. +30.

How is that? Well, traditional +/- arbitrarily counts shorthanded and empty net goals. For a guy like Yandle, who plays a ton of PP, he's starting the year -10 to -15 before he even hits the ice.

Brian Leetch was once -18 in a year he had one of the best 5v5 goal differentials in the league.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rangerfan4life90
Machinehead said:
Yeah 2014 Team USA that took Paul Martin and Brooks Orpik instead. Good luck with that one.

Here's a fun fact: Yandle is a career plus at 5-on-5. I absolutely kid you not. 619 goals for, 589 goals against. +30.

How is that? Well, traditional +/- arbitrarily counts shorthanded and empty net goals. For a guy like Yandle, who plays a ton of PP, he's starting the year -10 to -15 before he even hits the ice.

Brian Leetch was once -18 in a year he had one of the best 5v5 goal differentials in the league.
Click to expand...


Paul Martin and Brooks Orpik could both play defense.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Maximus
Sayba said:
The same reason he was left off 2014 Team USA, and a career minus player is because he is and was a liability on defense. He did not live to the expectations offensively either running our pp.
Click to expand...

His "bad defense" is way overblown. And sure, he's been successfully running a PP everywhere he's been, and then he comes here and can't do it all of a sudden? Yeah, AV had nothing to do with that...

The fact is, AV completely misused a 50-60 point proven offensive d-man. No two ways around that. That's when I started realizing that AV, as good as he is/was, got completely clueless at times.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Ad

Ad

Top Bottom