TrueBlueGED

I hate you. I had moved on, I really did. And then you go and pull me right back in. You suck! :p Who saw O'Reilly as too slow? His coaches, or fans? O'Reilly's best offensive season statistically in his career was stapled to Duchene's wing, one of the fastest skaters in the league. O'Reilly is one of those players who can play fast without skating fast. As to why I think it was such a good idea to see, it's because of O'Reilly's defensive ability and play off the puck. I really don't think Eichel is an easy player to play with in the sense that he's so puck dominant. Whoever he plays with needs to have a sense of how to find openings and play without the puck, and O'Reilly is tremendous at that. Furthermore, O'Reilly would help cover for Jack's fairly atrocious defensive deficiencies. One of the reasons Jack's possession stats have ranged from poor to mediocre in his career is he tends to get pinned in his own end for long stretches, because he (and Kane, whom he played with) are horrible there, and really struggle to get the puck back. Overall I think O'Reilly and Eichel had great complementary skillsets and play styles that could have formed a dominant line regardless of who the 3rd wheel happened to be. Unfortunately, both Bylsma and Housley insisted that the only way to use O'Reilly was as Patrice Bergeron, so we never got to see it. And with that, I really am moving on...to praying for a Karlsson trade and subsequent flip of Risto for forward help. Onward!

I continue to be positively baffled that people are putting more weight on public quotes than on-ice play. Truly, I am.

Vegas. That's about it. The Leafs have $13 million in cap space. Maybe you can make them pay more than they'd like, but Nylander isn't going anywhere.

Nope. There's a reason he's bouncing around the league.

He saw how many Swedes we have!

Alternative interpretation: he has incredibly high standards for himself and desperately wants to get better. He's just not talented enough to give more than he has to this point, so it always seems to never change.

Here's a real question: would Thomas Holmstrom be nearly as valuable today with how the league is playing?

I don't think those differences in usage are especially meaningful. They're really close. And we have to keep in mind we're only looking at faceoff starts here, not on the fly shift starts, which make up the majority of shift starts. Sadly, we don't have those numbers to look at. In any even, I think we can agree that Eichel's minutes are about to get considerably harder with ROR gone. I expect Berglund/Sobotka to eat some of those, but not all. But then I'm really down on Pegula. I really hope that isn't the case. Edit: WRT Tage...American-born NCAA player. Botts doesn't need stats to love him :p Right. Just because we have people who do stats doesn't mean they're any good at it.

I disagree. O'Reilly wasn't going anywhere. Botterill could have held out if he wanted to. Again, look at the Duchene example. I respect the need to make a change if it simply has to be done, but it doesn't have to be done instantly when a guy is under contract.

I mean, it would've been cool to see what O'Reilly would have looked like on Jack's wing. After all, his best offensive season was on Duchene's wing. But I understand we were in the midst of playoff contention and didn't want to change up what was working. *screams into the nether* To be clear, this snark isn't directed at you. It's just one of those things that I truly can't comprehend our coaches not getting a real look at as we plummet to the bottom of the standings the past two years.

If he did that, we might have only gotten a Duchene-level return for him. ;)

i can't believe the Lakers just renounced the rights to Julius Randle in order to free up cap space to sign...Rajon Rondo. LeBron continues to demonstrate his basketball IQ doesn't extend to player personnel decisions. Eleven, how do you feel about this? :p

In response to IKP, I will say that comparing scoring across teams is really tricky. Here are two real players: Player A: P1/60: 2.12 CF%: 46.81 GF%: 55.56 xGF: 37.18 xGF%: 47.22 Zone-start ratio: 61.66 TOI% QoT: 29.59 CF% QoT: 49.17 TOI% QoC: 28.47 CF% QoC: 50.01 Player B P1/60: 1.67 CF%: 49.03 GF%: 45.35 xGF: 37.18 xGF%: 47.62 Zone-start ratio: 60.55 TOI% QoT: 30.62 CF% QoT: 47.91 TOI% QoC: 29.48 CF% QoC: 50.1 Those usage numbers are incredibly close for players on different teams. Basically, both players were pretty sheltered and their coach tried to maximize the offensive situations they were put in. Player A, however, produced considerably more even strength scoring than player B. Given these numbers, you would think there would be a considerable even strength scoring dropoff of Player A's team if they swapped Player A out for Player B. I think that is a fair reading of the numbers. Player B is Jack Eichel. Player A? Well, that's none than our old friend, much-maligned Thomas Vanek! Raise your hand if you saw that coming. Vanek was 9th in the entire NHL in P1/60 among players skating at least 800 ES minutes. Yes, you're reading that correctly. Eichel was 46h. Swapping Eichel for Vanek would not only not be much of a dropoff by this metric, but it would be a drastic improvement. Is there a single person anywhere who would think it's a good idea to make such a move? Or that those metrics would translate straight to the ice surface? If Botterill and crew really are relying on analytics to drive decision-making, and their actions are based on a conclusion that swapping out O'Reilly for Berglund and Sobotka will be roughly the same on the ice....they need to fire their entire stats department.

Short of Botterill outright saying it, I couldn't be more certain that their target date for competitiveness is the 2020 season. Everything points to it.

Well, he is certainly trying to clean it up. Whether he is or not remains to be seen.

I woke up with a brutal fever at 3am I'm fighting through. It's 90 out and I opened a window because I'm freezing. And I hate the heat. It's also possible being this sick has contributed to my surliness.

Then we're either screwed or Dahlin is good enough to make it right.

Looking at last year's team, it's pretty hard to say they should have been considerably better. They iced 3 top-6 forwards (one of whom, Reinhart, only played that way for half the season), had two second pairing defensemen playing top pair minutes, had 3rd pairing playing 2nd pairing, and AHLers playing on the 3rd pair, had bottom-5 goaltending in the league, and a collection of wingers so bad we were actually impressed by Wilson. But somehow, they should have been notably better. And since they weren't notably better, it's obviously a chemistry problem. This whole things still just makes me insane.

He backed himself into a psychological corner by feeling he had to move O'Reilly. I don't think there's a reasonable way to look at the trade as anything other than being desperate to get rid of the guy. We are neither faster, nor younger, nor better right now. So in a way, he didn't have all of the options and leverage in the world....though the restrictions were self-imposed, in this case.

No, because he literally had no options. The return sucked, but given the circumstances, it was always going to suck. He had no leverage there.

I'm stubbornly resisting it because nothing on the ice, visible to us as fans, would suggest it was true. If he was so incredibly lost as a Sabre, why did he produce his best season as a Sabre?

Let me try this: I don't think the team was good enough to know whether the pieces fit.

Yet, for whatever reason, Hamilton hasn't gone on a "he must go" crusade like he did for O'Reilly.

Hamilton has also called Reinhart and Risto uncoachable. His interpretation of interpersonal relationships on the team has no value to me. And not for nothing, but what if O'Reilly's problems with Eichel were justified?

Well, Jeremy Rutherford reported the Blues were trying to trade them for awhile. I wonder if O'Reilly had the audacity to tell Jack he should contemplate playing defense once in awhile. Maybe O'Reilly was hurting the room because he was demanding accountability from others, and wasn't getting it. There is as much evidence for this as there is any of the other nebulous stuff out there. This also a part of why I hate even talking about the room. We have no freaking clue. Neither do the beat reporters.