GDT: Washington Jumbo Slices vs Detroit Little Caesars - 7:08pm EST

[Brian23]

I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.

For someone who likes to tell other people they're upset about CMC, and it not being your problem, you really seem to have a CMC problem.

 

[g00n]

For someone who likes to tell other people they're upset about CMC, and it not being your problem, you really seem to have a CMC problem.

Really? The mirror bullshit again?

 

[Rayquaza64]

.

Initially the way to get what you wanted seemed to be promoting the idea that the team sucks because Lavi hates young players and is keeping CMM down unfairly because of an age bias. "Old and slow" has been the mantra and to be fair you're not the only one chanting it. But the endless promotion of the idea has resulted in it being accepted as "likely true" simply by virtue of repetition and forceful assertion.

But there's no proof of any of it. The only answer I've gotten so far is "Fiala". Really? I bet every team has at least a few prospects whom fans believe weren't given a fair shake.

I’ve been looking into this and it doesnt seem to be a common occurence among laviolette’s tenure in nashville. Hell, his first year in Nashville he had 21 year old Seth Jones 21 year Fillip Forsberg, as well as 25 year old Roman Josi and Mattias Ekholm getting big minutes as well, and he tends to play the younger highly talented players good and respectable minutes.

It really hasnt been an “issue” for literally all of his career until his washington career, where fehervary is the only skater under 25 who’s been able to earn more than bottom six/complete benchings from peter. Is it just because our younger players are just worse than every other teams? who knows. just interesting to look at in general and is really a quite odd pattern.

 

[SherVaughn30]

Crappy goal in the last three minutes of the game. Caps had some great chances its just one of those games.

No, they were fatigued and had mental breakdowns on that Wings game winning goal. Wings used their speed and interchanging of forward positions, disrupting the Caps man-to-man D coverage. Snively ended up covering the man in front of Kuemper, when that should be an assignment for either a d-man or the center. Wings drew away both positional players forcing Snively to cover down low where he's not accustomed to, as he is conditioned to watch the point man. Simply put you can't use the man-to-man defensive coverage all the time with one of the oldest teams, yet McCarthy is an old dinosaur and stubborn. The more you have to skate and chase in your D coverage, the more fatigued the players get, which creates more mental breakdowns.

 

[trick9]

Why would you think Laviolette is close to getting fired? He's closer to extension.

I think we've been playing well. Much better than expected with the roster we have. This is a roster issue, not a coach issue. Fully healthy we'd be a bubble team but right now our roster is filled with AHL players.

 

[zappa4ever]

No matter how you jumbo slice it
1-1 score heading late into a game isn't your best bet

many missed oppty's for that 2nd and 3rd goal put us in the situation
game should've been ours, hurts to come out with nothing

can't expect the goalie to keep it at 1

maybe this team will learn to hang on in these low scoring games (until we get healthier or get a fwd, might be best bet in how to hang in there)

 

[IafrateOvie34]

Playing defensive is they way they should play til healthy. Maybe for the rest of the season with this group. Darcy playing good. Ovy cant do anything by himself. We are in the endgame, accept it. I just want gmbm to say either it’s about the record or winning. Just let us know.

Indeed. We have the goaltending to do this route and I don't care if we win games 1-0 or 2-1, a win is a win. A lot of folks will be bored to death, however we the Caps have to do what works for now.

if kuzmenko is available and we are interested in pushing for a cup still i'd be all over that, but this next stretch will probably be huge for what direction the caps try to go this season or the future

Rutherford made a joke about rebuild a few weeks ago, so possibly.

 

[g00n]

I’ve been looking into this and it doesnt seem to be a common occurence among laviolette’s tenure in nashville. Hell, his first year in Nashville he had 21 year old Seth Jones 21 year Fillip Forsberg, as well as 25 year old Roman Josi and Mattias Ekholm getting big minutes as well, and he tends to play the younger highly talented players good and respectable minutes.

It really hasnt been an “issue” for literally all of his career until his washington career, where fehervary is the only skater under 25 who’s been able to earn more than bottom six/complete benchings from peter. Is it just because our younger players are just worse than every other teams? who knows. just interesting to look at in general and is really a quite odd pattern.

Exactly. Thank you for adding other examples to the point. I think this "Lavi hates young players and always has" thing is just confirmation bias working on people who are upset about TOI for a few players they want to see, and nothing more.

As for DC's talent, Lavi's working with what he has. He's been pretty consistent with his assessments and actions, as has the GM. We even have other players saying CMM needs work. It's not some anti-youth bias by Lavi.

The other possibility, noted some time ago, is maybe we overestimate the skills of our prospects. Most fanbases do. Maybe our guys just aren't all that good due to draft position and inability to scout or develop. This has been a concern in the organization for a long time and it seems like we're still riding the wave of high draft picks we gathered during the rebuild years.

If that's the case then we're in for a shitty time when these "core" guys all phase out because the current talent evaluators may not be capable of restocking the pool. Or else the farm system is doing something wrong.

Or...maybe we're all just impatient and have enjoyed a veteran team with few open roster spots for too long.

 

[Jags]

As for DC's talent, Lavi's working with what he has. He's been pretty consistent with his assessments and actions, as has the GM. We even have other players saying CMM needs work. It's not some anti-youth bias by Lavi.

I agree with that assessment of his track record, too, but it's not the Ekholms, Forsbergs, Josis, and Joneses that we're talking about here. What's his track record with talent more in line with what we actually have? Name the players that he gave shots to and helped develop at the NHL level, not a list of stars that were locks regardless.

There are plenty of coaches, including some great ones, that don't do much of that unless they have little choice, and others that are all about it, for better and worse. Lavi is definitely more that second type.

I don't think he's got anything against young players, but it's pretty clear that if you give him a veteran option, he's going to go that way more often than not. What I saw from Lavi this year was that he gave the couple available spots he had to the best players in camp. Protas and Gus earned those spots. CMM didn't impress in the preseason. What he did last year didn't seem to count for much, and maybe it shouldn't.

If there's blame to be handed out on this specific issue, it's probably more on MacLellan. Laviolette would have had to make another choice or two if Mac hadn't signed MoJo or kept Eller. If this were all on Lavi and everyone else wanted the kids to play, "everyone else" had the power to make that happen for sure.

Having said that, MoJo turned out to be a good move. I'm less sold on keeping Eller, but retaining depth when you have a shitload of guys injured isn't so bad.

So I'm not angry at the coach or GM over this right now. I personally would have handled things differently, but what the hell do I know? I think we're too conservative about finding out what we have in our prospects. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Rayquaza64]

Thats a problem that washington has had pre-Laviolette, giving up on players too quickly and not seeing what we have truly with them. Jonas Siegenthaler, Chandler Stephenson, and Burakovsky just to name a few

Honestly the Burakovsky saga is hilarious misnanagement. we traded him so we’d have the cap to extend vrana, then ended up trading Vrana ++ for mantha, who might not be a capital in the somewhat near future.

 

[Jags]

Thats a problem that washington has had pre-Laviolette, giving up on players too quickly and not seeing what we have truly with them. Jonas Siegenthaler, Chandler Stephenson, and Burakovsky just to name a few

Honestly the Burakovsky saga is hilarious misnanagement. we traded him so we’d have the cap to extend vrana, then ended up trading Vrana ++ for mantha, who might not be a capital in the somewhat near future.

Siegenthaler and Stephenson, definitely. Burakovsky had plenty of time and opportunity to develop, however. He needed to go somewhere else to grow because he was everyone's little brother here; too liked in the locker room, never held accountable by his peers. He was always going to be the fresh-faced kid here. The second he left town he was immediately a Cup-winning veteran of 300 NHL games that pretty much won a Game 7 by himself. He had an opportunity to adopt a whole new outlook and swagger, and he did pretty well with it.

But yeah, there was a definite pattern from the Trotz era through now where we didn't count enough on our farm. Getting those choices right would have saved us many millions in cap space while simultaneously icing better players. Playing Djoos for soooo long on his weak side instead of developing Siegenthaler on his strong side is a glaring example. Not so much because Siegenthaler was a no-brainer NHL talent; more because 60-pound Djoos on his weak side was clearly not a fit and Siegs showed enough promise at a bargain price to give him a crack.

Pretending Stephenson was playing shitty when what was clearly happening is that everyone that played on the 4th that year struggled mightily because Reirden couldn't stop changing personnel. Pretending we needed Shattenkirk when Schmidt was playing really well. Placing the right value on the right guys instead of caving and filling every "if" with an unnecessary Shatty or Orpik 2.0 or Chara or Panik, etc.

Play the kids when it's time. If it doesn't work out, you've got the wrong kids. Go get new ones. But this thing we do where we keep them regardless and rarely give them real opportunities to graduate? Tired of that shit.