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Neb00rs

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Everything posted by Neb00rs

  1. I mean, the lottery usually includes fifteen teams, so the only point of contention is that this time there were certain teams that agreed to be eliminated from competition before they were mathematically eliminated. I'm not going to pretend the Devils made out well here: they ceded a chance at the playoffs and ended up with the second worst pick of eliminated teams. But it's not like they had much of a choice and in doing so they gave themselves the best chance they could at winning the lottery. It didn't work out. I also don't agree that getting a chance to play in the qualifying round should result in a 0% chance to win the lottery. Only teams that actually make the playoffs should have no chance at the lottery. You can make the argument that less non-playoff teams should be in the lottery in general, but then you're proposing changing the way the lottery operates in any year. Unless you want to make a claim that the lottery was rigged, I don't really feel like there's much to complain about here. If Blackwood hadn't played as well as he did, the Devils might very well be picking at two or three. I agree that it doesn't feel good for a qualifying round team to win #1. But the outcome doesn't really disrupt my sense of fairness that much, especially based on precedent.
  2. Hey, despite the way the lottery played out the Devils are very likely to draft one of Rossi, Holtz, Raymond, Perfetti, Drysdale, (there seems to be some consensus that Stutzle is going top 5), and getting any one one of those players is going to be cause for excitement among the fanbase. Despite the narrative about this draft being filled with can't miss prospects, it seems mostly like a pretty average draft to me, but still, the Devils are bound to select someone at seven that might very well have been selected at three or four. So, there's a lot of room for positivity here. And if there's any one person at fault for where the Devils are picking, it's Mackenzie Blackwood, not Gary Bettman.
  3. Because the Devils might be weighing the cost/benefit of hiring a new, expensive coach now vs. simply waiting another year (especially if they really like Gronborg). If the Devils believe that 2020-21 is another lost season, they might be more inclined to let Nas run the ship again (a la Blashill in Detroit) than we're inclined to believe and then reassess after the season. Nas did almost nothing to prove he deserves this job moving forward - if he stays, he's a placeholder. If you asked for my best guess, no, I don't think he stays.
  4. I definitely don't see the point of ranking the losers in reverse order [according to their regular season points %]? The advantage there to a team like the Canadiens is heightened when they're getting a shot at the playoffs while sitting far below the cutoff in the original standing and even if they lose they'll land on their feet. At the same time you make the format less appealing to a team like the Penguins, which had 15 more points than the Canadiens as of the last game of the season, and now have to risk getting bumped by the Habs and only have a 1% chance of winning the lottery. I don't think your plan passes a vote. The NHL has the right format, the question is, should they do it in one shot or two? Two is whatever to me. I'm sure they're just praying the Penguins don't end up with the top pick.
  5. I don't really see what the big fuss is about the two lotteries. It's complicated...but so what? It's pretty clear where the Devils stand and the NHL [possibly] gets the chance to run the big reveal show twice. Maybe that will somewhat make up for the millions of $$$ in COVID testing this R2P is going to eventually cost the league. Better yet, it'll give something to the eliminated teams to chew on while twenty-four other teams play hockey. The bigger concern is the possibility that a top team like the Penguins loses their play-in and ends up winning the lottery and Lafreniere. That would cause an uproar. I don't think it's all that unlikely the Pens lose either. The Pens are a lot better than the Canadiens but after all that time off? Weird things are bound to happen. Still, teams that were sitting in a playoff spot at seasons end should probably gain some advantage if they don't end up making the playoffs under this new format - this is it, they now get a lottery shot and it's only a shot.
  6. Yes, the point I was making was in re: the Devils being on the outside of the 24 team play-in. The rub in the negotiations is making everyone happy. What is the impetus for the Devils to accept the return-to-play plan? They get bumped out without any significant gain. A nay vote from the Devils wouldn't have mattered anyway but the Devils voted for it. Why? Probably because they're happy to just stay in their lottery position and not risk infection. Glass half-full is: had the Devils made the playoffs (i.e. won their play-in), they would be out of the lottery and would very likely not go much further. Now they secure a good draft position pretty much regardless.
  7. Are you responding to me? I'm referring to if the Devils win their play-in. Not if they lose. Playoff teams aren't in the lottery.
  8. The bottom-ranked (25-31) teams really don't get anything from this return-to-play plan. They agree to be eliminated and don't get any better draft odds. This has the smell of the "out" teams like the Devils just being happy to avoid the risk of infection and turn their attention to the draft. It's capitulatory, but there's a really strong risk the Devils worsen their lottery odds significantly and don't win a single playoff game. It might be maddening now to give up the chance to play-in but after the Devils pull off an upset and win their qualifying series and then get bounced in the first round of the playoffs, many of us will be wishing that the Devils had a higher draft pick and the team's glaring holes will not have gone away. I'm not saying the chance to play-in wouldn't be nice, you don't want to have a loser attitude, but this is a pretty solid way to look at the glass half-full. The worst part of it all, is that we might not have Devils hockey for a total of almost 11 months. But I mean, some of ya'll were begging for a break from the perennial sh!tshow anyway.
  9. Because we've tacitly accepted that doing so is bad for business. Many people also choose not to get the flu shot even when they have affordable access to it. This in itself costs many people their lives - but because any given death can't be traced back to a single individual, no one bears the weight of guilt. If there was more social pressure to get the vaccine and stay home when you have the flu, less people would die. I want to be really careful when speaking about the current Coronavirus strain (SARS-CoV-2), because there's so little we know about it yet. We don't even know for sure how it will respond to warmer temperatures. The studies on it are just beginning and what's out there often isn't peer reviewed or includes small or problematic samples. Given that we have no idea about just how bad this virus is or what its mutations will look like, its extra important that we slow it down. One [non-peer reviewed] paper I read did seem to suggest that healthy young/middle aged people probably become much less infectious (or not contagious at all) after about 10 days or so (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v1.full.pdf). If that's true, then the two-week quarantines that have been so widely recommended (or in some countries mandated) may just go a long way in slowing the spread of the virus. There was a very small sample size in that study though.
  10. Yeah, this. The precautions being taken to the slow the spread of the virus do just that: slow it - not stop it. Slowing the virus' spread will lower the toll on the overloaded healthcare system and thus allow medical workers to meet the demand for care. While there is no approved treatment for the virus, the ability of hospitals to manage the symptoms of high-risk patients (the elderly and those with certain preexisting conditions) could mean saving the lives of many of those people. If everyone gets sick at the same time, doctors and nurses simply won't be able to provide sufficient care and such could mean a catastrophe. That said, the virus will in all likelihood, end up infecting tens to hundreds of millions of people in this country by some point, no matter the precautions we take.
  11. This is your classic, "Daniel has a point jumbled somewhere in his overall nonsense" series of posts. Your point that Jack Hughes hasn't been very good this season, is, obviously correct. I've already said this before, but it's a little confusing as to why you would then conclude that he's a bust. It doesn't really matter that he's a 1st overall pick. The question is simply, "do players who eventually turn into star players have unproductive early years sometimes?" Obviously the answer to that is yes. Playing the numbers game doesn't really help you - because by that measure, Jack could absolutely still become a star still, especially given that he played this whole season at age 18 and...undersized. So the question becomes what is your analysis of Jack's on-ice game that leads you to conclude that he won't pan out? The other day (during a game where Jack missed his teammates with numerous passes) you mentioned his bad passing and I agreed that this is the most worrying thing about his game. But I also pointed out that he makes plenty of elite passes and plays too. And his skating is just fvcking ridiculously good sometimes - it's such a weapon throughout the ice and will keep him in the NHL for a long time. So it's not like he arrived at the NHL and is all of a sudden not capable of translating his skills. It's just that you only remember/notice his most visible mistakes and successes. Despite seeming like complete chaos to the lay observer, an NHL game is heavily structured and at high speed surrounded by the world's best players it can be hard to learn how to carry out that structure in real time. And Jack certainly gets a little lost sometimes as far as where to go and what to do goes. For example, I mentioned a few times during the course of this year that sometimes when Hughes sees opponents coming towards him he'll quickly get rid of the puck in irresponsible fashion - it's how he's learned to avoid taking hits/losing the puck straight from his stick. I'm sure the coaches are showing him video of specific instances and telling him, "Jack when that happens do _____ with the puck instead." So it's just a matter of turning that knowledge into second nature along with adding a little more size so he can protect himself and the puck a little better. Given that he seems to be a highly motivated player, I see little reason to believe he won't put in the time and effort to figure out what he needs to do out there (Just look at the Detroit game - does that hit you as a player who is unmotivated?). And yeah, while I think anyone who says, "Jack has been great this year," is lying to themselves, I also think that it still stands to be a matter of time before Jack is lighting it up.
  12. That's consecutive games, and back-to-back no less, where the Devils outplayed the other team to win the game and didn't just fall back on goaltending. I'm glad they won a couple this way. It feels kind of pointless to win games where the team plays bad - you decrease your lottery odds while showing little progress. These last two wins are something to build on at least.
  13. The Devils beat a good team and it wasn't because the goalie stood on his head - they were pretty even with the Blues today, probably even outplayed them. These are the kinds of games Nas needs to get consideration for the HC job next year. It's just one game though and the Devils have largely not been very good under him outside of goaltending (and penalty kill). He's going to need a lot more of this type of win to make a case for himself. Needless to say, the Hischier-Palms line was alive today - no doubt they are much better without Hughes and having Wood and his size/strength/speed combo instead.
  14. Based on precedent that was an easy no goal call.
  15. I don't want to become conspiratorial here, but to me, Jack is errr...not exactly 170 lbs. But whether he is or not, he can, even naturally, put on a lot more weight if he chooses to do so. Very few people reach their natural fat free mass potential in a lifetime. As for fat potential, well...humans seem to be much better at attaining that mark.
  16. I mean just speaking in terms of what's biologically possible he could (and will) gain well more than 10-15 pounds though it will take time and lots of surplus calories to maintain - especially given the cardio that hockey players get. That said he probably only needs 10-15 lbs to make himself safe out there. I'd like to see him put on 10 lbs this summer in a combination of muscle and some fat - he's young and has no real lifting experience which means he can synthesize muscle much faster than experienced lifters. He should be at around 4000 calories or more a day all summer. As much as Jack will deny it, his size and weakness have changed his game a lot this year. What's promising is that the last few games he's showed a tendency to use his body a little bit more, to lean in to players and drive. This year has made him tougher. But for the bulk of the season Jack has been manhandled out there, it's made him impatient with the puck and a ragdoll on the boards. I haven't actually minded the getting rid of the puck quicker part, you kind of have to do that in the NHL, and it's helped him avoid hits, hits he was taking early on and that could have seriously injured him. I'm a little worried about the occasions in which he throws passes into his teammates' skates but considering that he manages to also make some elite passes out there, I'll attribute that to some sort of weird funk rather than a lack of hockey IQ...for now. Yeah, as I think Nicomo pointed out above, there's only even three players from the 2019 draft class playing in the NHL right now and all of them have about the same stats with Kakko's defensive numbers maybe being the outlier in that they're a bit extra bad. Dach probably has been the best this year but making projections about any of these players full careers is a rather inane endeavor. Jack is still 18, and players of his size and age who play in the NHL are exceedingly rare. Even Kane was 19 for most of his rookie season, though yeah, he sucked a lot lot less than Jack.
  17. Yeah it's Mac. Keep in mind that while the Devils have put up a decent record since Nasreddine took over, they are actually scoring slightly less 5v5 goals per 60 minutes (2.21) than under Hynes (2.27). And since January 1st, the Devils are 27th in the league in that category (2.08). The Devils are not actually scoring goals, the goaltending just got better. To be fair to Nas, he's lost a lot of key pieces along the way, pieces that Hynes had. But he has to give the team a reason to keep him over another coach and he just hasn't done that. If the analytics department has the influence that the media suggested they have when Shero was fired, then Nas will almost certainly not be back. The Devils are giving up the most shot attempts per game at 5v5 and on the whole really haven't generated all that much more offensively than under Hynes - despite a December in which the Devils played faster and started to produce a bit more in terms of quantity and quality. Again, Nas has a minor league defense in front of him but what exactly is the argument he's offering management to keep him on? I can't imagine he's back after a single conversation with Dellow and Cane.
  18. Your hyperbole makes your posts sound stupid but you're not wrong on the goal. He makes some good passes out there and some really bad ones. Certainly missing Palmieri on two straight seam passes, on what was a functioning powerplay, was not good and led to the SJ goal. There was a time when the, "he's just ahead of everyone else," argument would make me think - but yeah, he's got a lot of developing and maturing to do. But for every bad play he makes, and there are a lot, he makes a play that a "low hockey IQ bust," simply could not make.
  19. Lehner is likely out of the picture for the Devils but the expansion draft really shouldn't deter the Devils from acquiring a second goalie. So you have to expose one...so what? Protect the one you think is better. Should the Devils purposely have one crappy goalie for an entire season just to avoid having one taken away? I'm not sure never having a player at all beats having the player for one season. Okay, maybe don't trade significant assets for one.
  20. Not really sure I follow the "proven" thing. Even the best goalies can get suddenly start to slip or have down years a la Murray and Vasilevsky (or get injured a la Kuemper). Whether Mac is "proven" or not the Devils need to try and get the best goaltender they can to be part of a 1-2 punch with Blalckwood. It's only really when you have three good goaltenders that you can start wondering whether you need all of them a la the Rangers who, by the way, would be best served finding a way to get rid of Lundqvist by retaining some salary or throwing in an asset with him. Though his situation is complicated because he can still play and with only one year left on his deal after this season, he's not a complete albatross. Other than that, the Devils should sign or trade for the best goalie they can - taking into account cap projections for the coming years - and let him and Blackwood compete for playing time.
  21. The Devils were already going to have to add d-men this offseason before they traded Greene and Vatanen. Now they have a long road ahead of them. Hopefully both Smith and Bahl can at least slot into the lineup somewhere in the next two years but neither of them are going to be better than either Greene or Vatanen next year. I think it's very likely Fitz moves a first round pick for defensive help. As for Mac, yeah you can't cherry pick sample sizes. I myself am rather uncomfortable ever using the the phrasing, "since "x" date, "x" player has been good." That's not how stats work - but you do have to choose some sort of parameters to confine your statistical observations within and a three month run is not a bad chunk of season. No one can be sure of Blackwood's future at the moment but that he's a rookie and playing like this, I do think it's a very good sign for things to come. But any netminder can go from starter to backup status or vice versa in a year's time, such are just the vicissitudes of goaltending. So, no conclusions drawn here and my point is only that Blackwood has been superb this year and I wanted to highlight that with the underlying numbers.
  22. It's great to see the league media finally starting to recognize the work that Mac has been doing. That's what happens when you play well for an extended period of time. On top of the stats listed above, Blackwood's play since December has moved him up to 4th in the league in 5v5 GSAx (goals saved above expected - a measure of save quality) for the entire season. And since that December 14th date, Blackwood easily has the highest 5v5 GSAx in the league (chart below). Since that date, Blackwood also has the highest GSAx in all situations. It was some early season weak goals against that sees him pretty far down the list for all situations GSAx since day one of the season. The stats above show two things. 1. The Devils aren't the best defensively and 2. Blackwood has consistently been making some of the most difficult saves in the league. Despite some poor showings, on the whole, if Blackwood finishes strong, he'll have had, in my view, an elite season. And he's a rookie. He's 21-12-7 on a team that is far away from making the playoffs. Pretty crazy.
  23. You can't really criticize Fitz for the wheeling and dealing aspect of this - the market is what it is. It's more an issue of pulling the trigger at the right time and choosing the right prospects and we really don't get enough info to judge. Was there a fourth on the table for Simmonds a week ago? Who were the other prospects offered for Vatanen? You just never know. It sounds to me like there is a broken bone in Vatanen's foot - just bad luck there. What I do like about what Fitz did today is what he said about Palmieri. He basically said that he's hard to replace and the he wasn't going to trade him unless he was offered something just ridiculously good. That's the right attitude given the Coleman trade. We have enough first round picks and not enough players now. It also really won't really ever be fair to judge Fitz's tenure if he isn't given the chance to run the upcoming draft. That's when he'll be able to really prove himself and put the picks he acquired to good [or bad] use. You'll notice that outside of Bahl, the Devils got nothing back really in terms of defense in any of their trades. That's a problem and Fitz is probably going to have to figure out how to trade one of our first round picks for a d-man.
  24. The stipulation is exactly what it should be. Basically, if Vatanen is healthy by the playoffs [and Carolina makes it in] the Devils get a third round pick. There was a point this year that Vatanen probably could have netted a top team's first round pick but alas, Kuokkanen is player that will, at least by next year, get a shot at a bottom six role in the NHL.
  25. Market wasn't great for Devils players. Fitz basically got the minimum return on all three players traded today. Domingue was shipped out the door for a possibly even worse goalie, but who cares I suppose? Simmonds gone for a likely 5th rounder and Vatanen gone for a fourth round pick and potential bottom-6 NHL forward. Meh. If Vatanen is out another month, that return will make a lot more sense. Hopefully the games played requirement for the pick to turn into a 3rd is fairly reasonable.
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