IKnowPhysics

I could've posted the whole thing twice.

/thread

Josh Allen is the best quarterback in football. Source: me. Supporting evidence: don't hate.

Yeah. We may be treating him like a 2C or even 3C, but make no mistake, he was being used as a clear-cut 1C in Minnesota. He was among the top thre forwards in goals, assists, points, EVG, EVP, PPG, PPP, GWG, and TOI/GP. He had the highest OZ Start %. It's weird. This trade makes a huge amount of sense for us: I like Johansson, but he's not reaching his potential jammed at 2C, whereas Staal is a near-perfect veteran 2C for the next year or two; definitely an improvement for us, let alone better cap numbers. But this trade makes almost zero sense for MN: They suddenly have a gaping hole at center with big questions regarding who will step up.

Bonus: We've begun to repair our Top Six / Center Corp without having budged our #8 pick.

Money over everything.

Nice. We'll see what the details are. Johansson was to make $4.5M this year, Staal $3.25M, both until the end of the season. Kevyn Adams played with Staal in CAR.

If this were a different season, we'd currently be between the NHL Trade Deadline and the end of the playoffs, when trade are historically very, very rare, as no team in the playoffs can ice a player acquired after the deadline. The draft is October 6/7 and free agency opens on October 9. Trades historically happen leading into the draft and not before the end of playoffs. Read between the lines.

No sir, this message board is a magnet for thoughtful, civil, even-keeled discourse.

I've never heard any of this, but I damn sure don't knkw everything. I'm gonna tag in @john wawrow for this one. John, you don't even need to confirm or deny actuality, only the existence of a rumor: have you ever even heard the rumor that Tim Murray referred to Kim Pegula as a *****? I mean, doing that is straight-up unconscionable. It's immediately and automatically termination-worthy. It's such a ridiculous idea that a person with brain one, let alone the GM of a professional sports franchise, would think they walk out of whatever room they're standing in with a professional future after saying that.

A tale as old as Rob Vollman...

Chad says Sabres and Penguins are talking, and he was told Matt Murray and Jared McCann are in discussion.

Yeah, there's data and analysis available that concludes that the top line has a better GA/60 with Reinhart on it, suggesting he's defensively useful. https://www.expectedbuffalo.com/buffalo-sabres-myth-busting-sam-reinhart-cant-produce-without-jack-eichel/

Wacky rumor on reddit that Mike Hoffman is sought by EDM, MTL, and BUF. Doesn't make much sense.

Taylor ***** Hall. Suddenly a top-five 1st line and a top-ten top six forward group.

Agreed. If Matt Ellis can make Matt Ellis as good as Matt Ellis, imagine what he could do for Casey Mittelstadt or Dylan Cozens.

My body is ready.

I forgot Jokiahrju (right shot) from the list, yes. I think I keep getting confused because I think Dahlin (left shot) lines up on the left, but many of his highlights, even non-PP highlights are him working the right point where his stick side is towards center ice/the net. He's an efficient puck mover on his stick side (left shot/LD), but he's a sickeningly lethal playmaker on his offside (left shot/RD). Nonetheless, still jammed on RD, with only McCabe and Dahlin lining up LD.

Pietrangelo is a right shot RD. Bringing him in means the following right-shot D: Pietrangelo, Ristolainen, Montour, Miller, plus Dahlin (left shot) on the right. If you bring him in, you're all but forced to move someone in that list out. Maybe that means making another move for some good forward return or an LD; maybe Risto goes. The only left shot D that's been playing LD now with Pilut gone is McCabe. Botterill left us a ***** mess. Pietrangelo's a good player, and a good player is a manageable asset, and with enough mangeable assets, you can make moves (as long as everyone's not locked into NMCs). I'm also not surprised by any UFA talk, because we have cap space and willpower to acquire UFAs, and any top-flight UFA available will come up in coversation around us, as we have many needs. Pietrangelo is the best D available, Hall is the best forward, and I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone mentions Holtby or Crawford. Callahan, Granlund, Byfuglien, and Schultz round out the front page of CapFriendly UFAs. We need to be. Botterill left us a ***** mess. But I'm optimistic.

Based on Rossi's NHLe, it's possible. I'm just hoping we get a shot at him, and if not him, another prospect in that plateau.

My progressive self usually would agree with you: "Of course size doesn't matter, scoring matters. Size is an archaic metric for the old timers' leftover memories of clutch-and-grab hockey." There are plenty of anecdotes that back up that thinking (St Louis, Gaudreau, et al). And there's some data: higher weight correlated to higher P/GP, but only in the 1967-1979 era, not the 2005-2012 era: https://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/2014/03/13/hockey_analytics_does_size_really_matter_in_the_nhl.html But if I'm being truly progressive, it's the data that matters, not anecdotal thinking, and that analysis isn't sufficient to answer the question of drafting size. So a deeper dive is worthwhile. A 2015 stats study of CHL players transitioning into the NHL looked into it. It defines "success" as 200 NHL GP (not perfect, but a start). https://canucksarmy.com/2015/01/27/size-does-matter-defencemen/ It concludes that while scoring in the CHL doesn't guarantee success in the NHL, not scoring in the CHL pretty much guarantees a lack of NHL success. It also observes that among players that do score in the CHL, the percentage of success is higher for players with taller heights. This was found to be true for forwards and defensemen separately (the article for forwards, although cited by several analytics journal articles, is since defunct): (height in cm is across the top row [183cm is 6'0"], P/GP in CHL is down the left column, percentages are of all 17 year old CHL players with 10 CHL GP that year that went on to play >=200 games in the NHL) Defensemen: The percentages and spread of percentages across height and P/GP for forwards are likely different, but the conclusions are the same. However, the percentages this concept is based on, if it they hold up, only hold for large numbers of selections, not the individual. So what do you do to maximize the odds? Draft size or draft scoring? Well, both. And if you can't get one, you get the other. So if other teams take size, you could find value in scoring, and vice versa. Additionally, since those models were published, more advanced models have been developed. Josh Weissbock developed Prospect Cohort Success, and then was hired by the Panthers in 2016. Jeremy Davis built Prospect Graduation Probability System and started a pay site, but still publishes publicly sometimes.

It's mostly this. With a good bit of this sprinkled in. This year's forward crop is particularly strong. It's considered so strong that it really gives the value of this year's #8 pick a boost over other years. This makes it somewhat enticing to keep the pick. However, we want to accelerate the team's performance improvement, as most of us are tired of losing/rebuilding at the cost of years of Jack Eichel's career. Defensemen take longer to develop and any that aren't Dahlin will likely take one to four years to develop into being NHL-ready. Some of the forwards potentially available at #8 this year are strong enough to play in the NHL next year, a somewhat unusual occurence for players drafted at #8.