Randall Flagg

Sure it's less likely, but Barrie is still an elite offensive driver, is only 28, and is entering an offense a couple levels above his old one, which really just consisted of 3 forwards passing between each other and the rest of the team being completely mediocre. It's also completely unlikely that Pavelski had the season he had at his age, or Sid, or Pat Kane for that matter. The age curve seems to matter less and less the more you can play, and Tyson can play, at least offensively.

If that was a tweet citing the same rumor I saw on fb/twitter then I'm pretty sure it was nonsense.

Cool article on the exact Seahawks/Wilson topic: https://presnapreads.com/the-seahawks-offense-enhances-russell-wilsons-skill-set/ @That Aud Smell it speaks to some of the questions you asked

It's at least an interesting question, no? This includes McDavid's first few weeks, in which of course he wasn't as great. Same contribution to actual goals, Connor with better performances in both of the stats which best predict future goals and future goals against, xGF and CA (This isn't a serious argument I'm making fun of these charts right now)

Anyway we obviously aren't changing minds at this point and I have to cook dinner, so nice debate Thorny, good practice for when we all have to yell at each other to deduce why the Sabres suck so bad this year

First, I really have to stop closing the stat trick page every time I finish a post because I've had to re-open it and click through the minefield about ten times now lmao Second, I'll list the first forwards/d-pairs to appear for each team: Braun/Vlasic, Alzner/Niskanen, also Hedman for Tampa's D, Callahan, Oshie, Marc Staal for the Rags (Kessel had McDonagh nope read that wrong, he was Skjei/Klein while sid appeared to face staal/klein), Backstrom instead of Kuzy, Thornton/Pavs line about 60/40 with Logan, Callahan/Johnson/Palat more than the Kucherov line which Phil saw the most, though Crosby did face Kucherov almost as much as those guys. The only team that threw tougher players at Sid than Phil was the Rangers, because their lower lines were garbage, which is why Pitt blew them out of the water, causing teams to reevaluate and start sending out actually good players against Kessel. Sid played Stepan and Kessel got E. Staal I don't see much of a difference, though certainly Sid took more D-zone draws which as I've learned from Phil and Vlad are the holy grail of importance (this is 100% a shot at Phil citing left zone draws as a reason to use the worst player in the league more than all but 3 other forwards on the team)

Imagine your vastly inferior competition meaning that these were the skaters you saw the most in the playoffs: Burns, Couture, Niskanen and Carlson (ie Washington's number 1 pair), Hedman more than any other Tampa D, the Kuznetsov line If Crosby's competition was vastly superior, he must have been playing against Bobby Orr himself and I missed it? Teams were aware which line was killing them haha and they adjusted accordingly. It was literally the goddamn story of the postseason

Crosby wasn't even better than Couture, Murray, or Jones

Hagelin - Bonino - Kessel was the best line by any measure in the entire playoffs that year, and it was because of Phil Kessel's driving play in that playoffs. Teams beat Sid. They couldn't beat Kessel's line.

Geno "accomplished" just as much as Sid did - although his line actually won the total postseason goal battle, unlike Sid's, so maybe even Geno should jump him, I may have to revise!

And I still don't know how two of 18 voters left Kessel off their ballots completely, because if those two hadn't been complete and utter morons, he would have won it - it was the closest vote ever even with two guys deciding they weren't going to give him any points for some reason or another. Probably that damned Tronna media *shakes fist

I'm not. Nobody even talked about Sid until the narrative late became about how nice his trophy case would be with another one in there. I think you're getting hung up as if I"m claiming Phil Kessel has ever been superior to Sid in any way. This has never been true, and it's also not what the Conn Smythe Trophy is about. Sid's postseason, while wonderful for a 1C, was not a Conn Smythe postseason in 2016. His play wasn't as important to the outcome as Kessel's was. It wasn't as important as Murray's was. It wasn't as important as Couture and Jones, either, who were far more important to their teams being where they were (though I recognize that others might not share my inclination to give Conn Smythes to losers more often than it happens - I'd have given it to Tuukka Rask over my very own Boi Ryan O'Reilly this year). He was pedestrian against New York. He couldn't break even against Tampa Bay, and he couldn't against Washington either (GF% of 33%). Couture took it to his line when they matched up against each other, and he outscored Nick Bonino by one point, while Kessel's goals and points were just big effing goals and points, the kind of stuff that make Conn Smythe postseasons if not "this player is definitely a better player in a vacuum over long stretches of time." Sid got his 2016 Conn Smythe because of his name more than his value to the game results that happened in the spring of 2016.

I watched every second of Penguins hockey with my Pens fan buddy too, and our jaws hit the floor when the winner was announced. HF isn't an authority, but I've been reading there in 2012, and they've only had a hissy fit with one Conn Smythe winner in tthose seven years, and it was Sidney Crosby's first. Not his second, just his first, so it's not a Crosby thing. The thing that drove the summer-long outrage was not nothing, no matter how little you care about what other die-hard hockey fans think. Crosby did his job well, as did nearly every other Penguin on the roster, but he didn't deserve that Conn Smythe. He didn't even win his on-ice battle with Logan Couture in that series - their lines were even in ES goals against each other, but the Sharks controlled over 60% of expected goals, and Sid himself didn't score in the finals. The Penguins separated themselves on that run with their third line that no teams could match even if they could break even with the first two, with Crosby and Malkin, which they fairly often did (see Sid's -2). That explosive depth from Bonino and Kessel being un-match-able was the dominant story for their entire run, if it wasn't Matt Murray coming out of nowhere in the high .920s as a rookie in the playoffs a la Dryden. It was a passable decision, but incredibly eyebrow-raising and did not fit in with any dominant narrative that I was seeing at the time either in serious discussions about the playoffs as they happened or with my eyes as I watched the playoffs unfold. Now, given your history of Crosby posts here, I'm not exactly surprised it was clear to you ?

Sid was incredibly quiet for long stretches of that playoff, there was like a 150 page thread on hf boards where hockey fans of all teams combined lambasted that Conn Smythe pick at the time. It's whitewashing to say he was the best player on that team in the playoffs, that was a big thing, driven largely by Penguins fans themselves. And this is an interesting discussion because I don't think Crosby's status as best in the game is a constant over the last decade or so. I think he probably was in 2018-19. There is not a chance you can convince me he was better than Connor in 16-17. He was about 20 points short and was notably worse in all tangible defensive metrics that exist, including those lovely regularized RAPM charts that have convinced everyone Vesey is trash. And I think the Connor at the end of 15-16 is pretty similar to the Connor of 16-17

Lol Crosby deserved that Smythe about as much as I deserve the break from homework I'm taking right now! The second one, sure.

I don't think this stuff maps like that, is all. I don't think you can guarantee Dahlin was better in the NHL this year than Miro, and I don't think that you can be sure that a season spent on Frolunda would have been clean-cut better than what Miro did in Liiga the previous year. I don't think you can guarantee anything about the summer either of them have had, until we see what it results in. And all of that puts two players within a year of each other on roughly equal footing, which calls into question naming a defenseman who probably wasn't top 25 in the NHL at his position the McDavid of defensemen, when McD spent a chunk of his rookie year as the best player of any position on the planet, more or less

If we're really, really insistent on post-draft season comparables, I recall reading that his Liiga season was borderline unheard of/unbelievable as an 18 year old too, does anyone have a super reliable way to compare that to Dahlin's solid if not super spectacular season in the NHL? He led Liiga in ice time and was voted league's best defender at age 18, was that something we can guarantee Dahlin would have beaten in the SHL?

They're two hockey players that are incredibly similar in play level, born less than three quarters of a year apart. That's all I'm sayin cuz, and McDavid didn't have that guy

My justification is that Rielly's offense jumped 38% from his career best last season, and I think Barrie is even better at the role that gave Rielly that jump than Rielly is, so I think he's going to steal it. Which really does mean that I should have dropped Rielly more than I did, but the list is published now!!

They had identical ES production and Heiskanen only got 58% of Dahlin's PP ice time per game. He did only get 40% of Dahlin's PP production in that time, so maybe he's a worse PP player, but I think we're splitting hairs there as I can't say anything about Dallas' PP structure, though I watched a game there live this year and he was incredible both at ES and on the PP. A year can mean a lot of development, but it doesn't guarantee that Heiskanen can't be seen as a near-equal to Dahlin. I'm pretty sure he is.

It's pretty crazy that they had us in the top ten with Scandella in their top six. I like our defense, I think it's league average with the potential for Dahlin to pull it higher. The real crime is Columbus at 11 and Minnesota at 16 - the stats indicate that Minnesota's defense is the one closest to St. Louis in terms of shot/quality shot suppression. And Spurgeon/Dumba can move pucks all day.

It's so hard to compare the positions. McDavid played like the best hockey player in the world after his injury in his rookie year, and had the scoring rate to back that up, even comparing to the Crosbys and Kucherovs. Dahlin did a lot of stuff really well, but I think just about every aspect of his game was a tier or two below the Norris candidates. However, comparing Dahlin to his 18 year old defensive peers over time does make him stick out more like a McDavid - in a fundamentally different, less spectacular way, because of the rest of the league. Then again, Heiskanen is just one year older and pretty comparable. But maybe he's just the Matthews to Dahlin's McDavid

Dallas' depth was worse than ours last year, and added Joe Pavelski - I think Dallas is going to score a lotta goals. And Barrie is fitting into a team that plays exactly the same way he plays for the first time in his career. He's going to steal the first power play unit from Rielly, and he's going to score a butt ton of points. He's a more talented offensive defenseman than even Rielly IMO. However, I recognize that the totals between them are probably at least 20 points too high. I guess I'd predict each of those guys with those point totals if the other one didn't exist. But I really think Toronto is devastating offensively so that's where that comes from. These are incredibly realistic - I'm hoping for the offensive explosion of last season to not only keep going, but get bigger!

That's what I'm trying to get at. Each game is its own incredibly detailed story, so adding the total number of pass and run plays from all games doesn't tell me much of anything.

How did they get to those numbers? What if they passed 55% of the time until they had 2-3 score leads, and then ran out the clock in a lot of their games? They won 10 games last year right? I know their o-line has been dogsh*t - maybe they knew that too and were trying to preserve Russell last year until they could address the issue, knowing that they were still capable of 10 wins while doing so?