dudacek

Sorry, that wasn't meant to be a shot. There were direct reports when Krueger was hired that Krueger's name was one Rutherford had saved, and he recommended Botterill take a look. I don't have time to go hunting right now, but there might be links in the Krueger hiring thread that just got resurrected.

Not arguing your points at all, however it should be pointed out he did have one off-season success: the special teams. PK has moved from among the all-time worst to top-10. The PP is top 3. Faceoff win percentage has moved into top 10 as well. Generally speaking, Sheahan and Reider and Lazar were good value signings that filled a need. Small consolation, I know.

In Botterill's defence, it was on the recommendation of your boy Rutherford

Are you thinking of the 86 squad, that was the first one to completely break my young heart. I mean looking back it had Foligno and Ramsey, but the realization that Tucker, Cyr, Creighton, Barasso or even Housley and Andreychuk weren’t going to save us was a slap in the face. And Perreault retiring and leaving us with the likes of fossils like Gillies and Fogolin and Paiement and Napier and Phil ***** Russel, and slugs like Dykstra and Hospodar and Jim Korn and Jacques Cloutier. 🤮

Are we sure this isn’t just a pen artistic rendering of Colin Miller’s mission statement?

How these two paragraphs are connected escapes me. The evidence is pretty strong. As for @john wawrow declining to scoop his own employer on this board it is as silly to consider that as it is to think your local pizza delivery man is going to feed you before his paying clients. No harm in asking (John of all people should get that) but being upset over his response is wasted energy.

This things aren't mutually exclusive. Adams basically handles the leadership role while evaluating what he has, Ellis handles the grunt work — practices and systems — so Adams can continue with GM work.

Not sure what the charts say, but my eyes say Skinner/Mitts/Lazar deserves another look.

Kind of a testimonial to Ralph’s commitment to never changing the plan, eh? Like they say about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Skinner and Mitts looking like we’ve always dreamed.

Never, ever said anything different. Only that linemates and usage should never prevent the real Jeff Skinner from scoring goals. Slow, sure. Stop, never.

That was a vintage Skinner goal. He doesn’t need to be fed the puck by great players, he needs to use his hands, his feet and his courage within 10 feet from the net.

One period away from a 0-6 run where we have been outscored so far 22-6 and outclassed virtually every period of every game. Coaches of real NHL teams don’t survive this.

For sure. The emphasis was on how much higher the expectations should be for the second set of players. Even a month ago, can you imagine thinking “Jack Eichel can’t score”

it’s like the tank-era teams when you knew there was no way guys like Konopka and Flynn and Leino and Hodgson and Mitchell were going to score. Except now those names are Skinner, Staal, Eakin, Eichel, Okposo and Hall. And vintage Dahlin net protection there.

Mittlestadt has been uneven, but he is trying and doing more to penetrate the Islanders blanket than most.

Vintage Hall. How the hell Matt Barzal lasted to pick 16 is hugely damning to the NHL scouting community.

Nothing unusual about the Miller gaffs being pointed out there. He’s got decent skill and compete, but his tunnel vision on offence and defence is the reason he should never be above a 5D. I think Montour is smarter, but similar and his spectacularly bad finishes are so frustrating.

Interim? (please?)

Sure fits with all the short-term contracts and the direction Adams took this summer.

I think he has a better case of “I’ve been jerked around” than most. This is a guy who hadn’t played hockey for more than a year. And their plan for him was to throw him into the fire on the first line against Caps best players, with an ailing Eichel, demote him partway through the second game, bench him after three games and basically let him rot away in the press box ever since? Every thing leading up to the first game said “we believe in you and you are part of this team moving forward.” Everything since has said “you are Dustin Tokarski.” He has gotten his body to the net better than most on a team that really needs that. He doesn’t “deserve” to be playing, but he’s not alone in that. He hasn’t been used as a prod to keep the other slackers honest and he hasn’t been allowed to work his way back from his layoff or develop as hockey player. He’s been put on a shelf.

Yep. Not just for development, but because the current structure of 2 scoring (Staal and Eichel) lines and 2 checking lines (Eakin and Lazar) isn’t cutting it. Definition of stupid and all that. Time to start playing Casey, Tage and Henri too. The latter two haven’t exactly distinguished themselves, but if they are part of the future, let’s see what they can do. And it’s not like they have been significantly worse than the guys they will be replacing have been.

I didn’t watch much of Hall last year, but it’s interesting reading some of the commentary in hindsight, and juxtaposing it with what we’ve seen this year and the kind of offers he’s got in free agency. It seems there was a strong streak of “he’s not the same player since the knee injury” running through the scouting community. When I watch Hall and Staal and Eakin, I wonder how heavily each was scouted prior to their acquisition. Were we going off data accumulated by Botterill’s mostly fired crew? Was it largely about Nightingale and the new skeleton crew running some tape and crunching some numbers? Was it Ralph (Hall) and Kevyn (Staal) leaning hard into their past associations? I’d imagine it was pieces of each, but the common thread here is we acquired players who aren’t as good as they used to be. I posted in fall that the Eakin signing in particular would tell me a lot about player evaluation under the new regime. None of our three biggest acquisitions have done anything to demonstrate that our lean staff knows what it is doing.

I think Victor has made notably fewer negative 5-on-5 plays than Jack this year. Jack's production has largely come from 2ndry assists on plays predominantly driven by Victor's snipes, Dahlin's passing and/or both from Sam.

It really feels the Hall camp miscalculated and is trying to get what they can before he's forced to find out how bad the market is for a 6-goal, 27-point scorer this summer.