Around the League: 2016-17 edition

[RizzMB30]

27 minutes ago, Daniel said:

And I'm sure the same people crying over Kaepernick were outraged when James Damore got fired or Brandon Eich had to resign.  Or when a mob forced Brett Weinstein out of his job at Evergreen State.  You live on Neptune if you think the bulk of people losing work over political or social views are on the left side of the spectrum.  

And I'm glad no team is signing Kaepernick, and I wouldn't want him on my team. He's a pseudo intellectual wannabe revolutionary.  He objectively supports Communist dictatorships (not that he would ever want to live under one of course) and is sympathetic to the murder of police officers.  In the same way, I wouldn't want a holocaust denier on my team either.  Free speech and all, it works both ways.

Bolded things important.  Kaepernick would be in Miami right now if wasn't for his views on Castro or in Baltimore if his girl didn't tweet out racist sh!t.  Don't know about the rest of that.  Free speech for all, even for language that is detestable.    

This should be tabled to an appropriate thread.

Edited September 27, 2017 by RizzMB30

[Triumph]

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

And I'm sure the same people crying over Kaepernick were outraged when James Damore got fired or Brandon Eich had to resign.  Or when a mob forced Brett Weinstein out of his job at Evergreen State.  You live on Neptune if you think the bulk of people losing work over political or social views are on the left side of the spectrum.  

And I'm glad no team is signing Kaepernick, and I wouldn't want him on my team. He's a pseudo intellectual wannabe revolutionary.  He objectively supports Communist dictatorships (not that he would ever want to live under one of course) and is sympathetic to the murder of police officers.  I wouldn't want a holocaust denier on my team either.  Free speech and all, it works both ways.

Shifting goalposts is bad in football and bad here.  We were talking about Joel Ward, something which made you so mad that he might consider a demonstration during the anthem, but he hadn't even done it yet.  Maybe this is his way of protesting is thinking about doing it and talking about it publicly and not doing it.  But already he was a bad ungrateful jerk in your eyes.  And that just says it all.  

[EdgeControl]

13 minutes ago, Triumph said:

Colin Kaepernick does not have an NFL job this season. He's not the greatest quarterback in the NFL, but I doubt he doesn't have a job because everyone's decided he's finished.

If kaeps completion percentage was over 65% and not 59% he'd be employeed.. btw,  he was offered a vet min. Deal and refused it. You don't hear that being told by the msm though... doesn't  fit their narrative 

[EdgeControl]

6 minutes ago, RizzMB30 said:

Bolded things important.  Kaepernick would be in Miami right now if wasn't for his views on Castro.  Don't know about the rest of that.  Free speech for all, even language is detestable.  

This should be tabled to a appropriate thread.

Landry would kill for kaep over cutler right now, Cuban population be damned ,lol,

[Daniel]

18 minutes ago, Triumph said:

Shifting goalposts is bad in football and bad here.  We were talking about Joel Ward, something which made you so mad that he might consider a demonstration during the anthem, but he hadn't even done it yet.  Maybe this is his way of protesting is thinking about doing it and talking about it publicly and not doing it.  But already he was a bad ungrateful jerk in your eyes.  And that just says it all.  

You brought up Kaepernick, so stop your nonsense.  

If Ward kneels during the anthem, he's being disrespectful to a nation that he has done very well in.  If he had real principles, and believed he and his kids were being systematically oppressed, he should, but of course doesn't have to, live somewhere else.  

Of course, the better thing would be to try and think of say a law or laws that would help alleviate his oppression, some educational program, or whatever.  But it's easier to be fashionable.

I recognize that he hasn't committed to anything, and maybe it's just being caught off guard by a question.  Hopefully he doesn't do it.

Edited September 27, 2017 by Daniel

[RizzMB30]

3 minutes ago, Daniel said:

You brought up Kaepernick, so stop your nonsense.  

If he kneels during the anthem, he's being disrespectful to a nation that he has done very well in.  If he had real principles, and believed he and his kids were being systematically oppressed, he should, but of course doesn't have to, live somewhere else.  

Of course, the better thing would be to try and think of say a law or laws that would help alleviate his oppression, some educational program, or whatever.  But it's easier to be fashionable.

I recognize that he hasn't committed to anything, and maybe it's just being caught off guard by a question.  Hopefully he doesn't do it.

Was me.   

Edited September 27, 2017 by RizzMB30

[Satans Hockey]

We do have a section for this stuff... 

http://njdevs.com/forums/index.php?/forum/19-politics-religion-amp-war/

[Daniel]

19 minutes ago, Satans Hockey said:

We do have a section for this stuff... 

http://njdevs.com/forums/index.php?/forum/19-politics-religion-amp-war/

Yeah, I know, but I guess it was a hockey story too.  I said my peace.  As I said, hopefully no one does it.

[Triumph]

It's fine if the mods delete these posts, but I'd appreciate it if they didn't - the intent was to spark discussion and discussion was sparked.  I'm also done with this particular topic.

[Crisis]

You guys see the Rangers lost last night?

 

[DevsMan84]

15 hours ago, Colorado Rockies 1976 said:

 

The Vancouver thing isn't that bad to me because it's more of a brief nod to local hockey history...snagging the history of a long-defunct hockey franchise and deciding to claim their championships is something else entirely.  What the new Sens did was a complete joke.

As you know, I'm very familiar with Scouts and Rockies history...Paiement and McDonald were their best players (Paiement was traded for McDonald in a multi-player deal...McDonald was actually quite bummed about being traded again less than two years later).  Ramage played three seasons with the Rockies and was a staggering -133 (shows how awful those teams were more than anything else).  And yeah, it was crazy that the 77-78 Rockies made the playoffs...19 wins in 80 games pretty much says it all...they won exactly TWO road games all season long.  Chico was a solid goalie at the end of his prime who didn't stand a chance on that team...they were abysmal defensively.  Unfortunately Beck was dealt under the usual circumstances:  lose the best player in the trade and get a batch of decent and/or pretty good bodies in return.  Always quality for quantity.

What's funny is that particular trade was only made because Imlach was in a feud with his captain Sittler and decided to get even by trading away teammates whom he was close to.  McDonald happened to be one of them and that lead to the trade to the Rockies in what is ironically probably their best player for player trade they made in their 6-year history.

McDonald was traded next year for Lever and MacMillan which while Lever and MacMillan were good players, it was like you said more of quality for quantity.

From what I remember hearing, Ramage asked to be dealt as he didn't want to go to NJ so he was traded to the Blues for picks.  According to NHL trade tracker website, the picks were first rounders in 82 and 83 which were Rocky Trottier and John MacLean.  The Trottier sounds right but not sure about MacLean as the Blues did not participate in the 83 draft at all.

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

50 minutes ago, DevsMan84 said:

What's funny is that particular trade was only made because Imlach was in a feud with his captain Sittler and decided to get even by trading away teammates whom he was close to.  McDonald happened to be one of them and that lead to the trade to the Rockies in what is ironically probably their best player for player trade they made in their 6-year history.

McDonald was traded next year for Lever and MacMillan which while Lever and MacMillan were good players, it was like you said more of quality for quantity.

From what I remember hearing, Ramage asked to be dealt as he didn't want to go to NJ so he was traded to the Blues for picks.  According to NHL trade tracker website, the picks were first rounders in 82 and 83 which were Rocky Trottier and John MacLean.  The Trottier sounds right but not sure about MacLean as the Blues did not participate in the 83 draft at all.

Yeah, the McDonald deal was made more out of spite than anything else on Toronto's side...that organization was horribly run in the 80s, from the very top all the way down.  It was really a shame that the Rockies couldn't hang onto McDonald (he truly wanted to be there and help the team improve)...Lever and MacMillan actually played fairly well as Rockies, but much less so as Devils...what made that deal a lousy one is that Lever and MacMillan weren't kids anymore (both were around 30), and they declined pretty quickly.  What's sad is that the Devils would've had the first pick overall in 1982, but that pick had been dealt by the Rockies some time earlier to Boston for Dwight Foster and Boston's 1982 first-rounder.  Boston reached with that pick and selected defenseman Gord Kluzak (a big guy at 6' 4" 220 lbs, but who had suffered torn knee ligaments months before), who wasn't expected to go that high...he would play in just 299 NHL games and struggled with staying healthy...he managed 13 more games after his age 23 season before calling it a career.  With Boston's pick (18th overall), the Devils took Ken Daneyko...a deal that surprisingly worked out for the Rockies/Devils almost in spite of themselves.

Re:  Ramage, it was more that he was tired of the constant state of flux surrounding the team and simply decided that he'd had enough...when he resigned his captaincy and asked to be dealt in late February of 1982, no one knew what the future of the Rockies held at the time...the Devils (who weren't the Devils then, even though they were in NJ...they hadn't picked their nickname yet) did get a solid return for Ramage with two first-rounders, though they botched the first one in Trottier.  As far as the Rockies went when Ramage made his trade request, there were a ton of scenarios being discussed...even the possibility that the Rockies might remain in Colorado.  NJ was just one of many. 

And of course, if not for more Colorado stupidity, the Devils could've had the third pick (wound up being Pat Lafontaine) AND the sixth pick (MacLean, through St Louis) in the 1983 pick, but their own had been dealt to the Islanders for Dave Cameron and Bob Lorimer.  Isles took advantage of the Rockies more than once. 

Edited September 27, 2017 by Colorado Rockies 1976

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Looks like Nolan Patrick is a good bet to start the season with the Flyers:

http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/sports/nhl/flyers/2017/09/26/flyers-nolan-patrick-closing-securing-nhl-job/704916001/

In case anyone was wondering, Patrick's played in five preseason games with no goals (11 SOG), two assists, and is a +2.

Hischier's played in three preseason games and has 3 goals (7 SOG), 1 assist, and is a +6.

Not making any "he's better" comparisons...just posting their preseason numbers...if anything, I think the fact that both of these guys are going to make their respective teams right off the bat doesn't really come as any great shock.  Patrick could have gone #1 overall just as easily as Hischier (though I'm happy that it's Hischier...it's just felt like the right choice). 

[Daniel]

The Blues put Beau Bennett on waivers.  I know stat nerds, especially Cordell, talk about his zone entries, Corsi or whatever.   However, if the Devils didn't bother even attempting to re-sign him at the league minimum, considering what the usually diplomatic Shero said about him (something to the effect that he's a nice guy, but just not a good enough hockey player), and that he didn't even make it to the last round of cuts by the Blues, maybe it's time for people to ease off those stats just a tiny bit. 

[Triumph]

I'll never defer to the authority of NHL GMs.  I understand they have different reasons for certain decisions, and I try to understand their reasoning as best I can, but Beau Bennett, assuming he's not out of shape or otherwise addled, clearly belongs on an NHL roster.

[Marshall]

14 minutes ago, Daniel said:

The Blues put Beau Bennett on waivers.  I know stat nerds, especially Cordell, talk about his zone entries, Corsi or whatever.   However, if the Devils didn't bother even attempting to re-sign him at the league minimum, considering what the usually diplomatic Shero said about him (something to the effect that he's a nice guy, but just not a good enough hockey player), and that he didn't even make it to the last round of cuts by the Blues, maybe it's time for people to ease off those stats just a tiny bit. 

Corsi does a decent job at predicting goal differential, which is why people care about it. Bennett had a 53.6% Corsi and 50% Goals For%, which isn't out of line for a bottom-6 type forward.

I know your schtick is to Don Quixote stats and fans of that sort of analysis, but it's starting to look pretty pathetic when you obviously don't (want to) understand them. 

[Daniel]

44 minutes ago, Marshall said:

Corsi does a decent job at predicting goal differential, which is why people care about it. Bennett had a 53.6% Corsi and 50% Goals For%, which isn't out of line for a bottom-6 type forward.

I know your schtick is to Don Quixote stats and fans of that sort of analysis, but it's starting to look pretty pathetic when you obviously don't (want to) understand them. 

I understand them fine, except for how anyone could really calculate goals or wins above replacement.  My annoyance is based on some peoples’ over reliance on them, when, for example, people are still talking about Beau Bennett as some diamond in the rough when he’s been given every chance to succeed (former first rounders get that benefit) and has been cut loose by three teams already, and it wasn’t based on the fact that he has a bad contract or something like that.

EDIT:  The other thing I’ll add is that probably the majority of teams, if not all of them at this point, have people who are completely devoted to analytics.  It’s very hard to believe that all GMs are so pig headed that not a single one to this point would take a chance on someone who is supposedly has a highish reward and virtually zero risk.  

Edited September 27, 2017 by Daniel

[Triumph]

10 minutes ago, Daniel said:

I understand them fine, except for how anyone could really calculate goals or wins above replacement.  My annoyance is based on some peoples’ over reliance on them, when, for example, people are still talking about Beau Bennett as some diamond in the rough when he’s been given every chance to succeed (former first rounders get that benefit) and has been cut loose by three teams already, and it wasn’t based on the fact that he has a bad contract or something like that.

He's not a 'diamond in the rough.'  You don't seem to understand nuance when it comes to this.  He's a decent, functional player with some obvious limitations.  Can he stay healthy?  Not demonstrably.  Can he perform well on the power play?  Doesn't appear so.  Is he a good shooter?  Not really, no.  And he hasn't been asked to kill penalties, and he doesn't fight, and he won't go around hitting people either.  But he scores at a third-line rate and pushes play forward, and that should be enough to keep a guy in the NHL, if only as an extra forward, even.

[Daniel]

24 minutes ago, Triumph said:

He's not a 'diamond in the rough.'  You don't seem to understand nuance when it comes to this.  He's a decent, functional player with some obvious limitations.  Can he stay healthy?  Not demonstrably.  Can he perform well on the power play?  Doesn't appear so.  Is he a good shooter?  Not really, no.  And he hasn't been asked to kill penalties, and he doesn't fight, and he won't go around hitting people either.  But he scores at a third-line rate and pushes play forward, and that should be enough to keep a guy in the NHL, if only as an extra forward, even.

If all one is saying that he can be on some team's third line, and do that well enough, ok great.  (Can he do that much better than ten or fifteen other guys that are out there to be had?)  Maybe he's not the guy I should be picking on or  using as a representative sample, but people like Cordell have what appears to be a fetish over him, and treated it like some tragedy when Shero didn't attempt to bring him back.

Otherwise, the collective ability of all  30, now 31 GMs and their scouting staffs to basically have no marginally above replacement level player languishing outside of the NHL for very long is I imagine very, very good.  Let's start with someone like Bennett.  Since, say 1990, how many former first rounders have been essentially dumped by one or more teams for nothing (and wasn't related to injury, severe character issues, fear of going to play abroad, etc.) who turned out to be more than just a guy?  How often do players that get picked up on waivers turn out to be better, or say appreciably better than just some guy?  And then, how often do players actually clear waivers at some point in their career turn into something better than that?  For all of the hockey players that come under any one those categories, if the total number is 30 or less, GMs and scouting staffs collectively are actually a very good authority when it comes to judging who should be in the NHL and who shouldn't.  And that's especially the case since until not that long ago, it was generally thought that every team needed at least one guy that couldn't do anything other than fight.

[Triumph]

3 minutes ago, Daniel said:

If all one is saying that he can be on some team's third line, and do that well enough, ok great.  (Can he do that much better than ten or fifteen other guys that are out there to be had?)  Maybe he's not the guy I should be picking on or  using as a representative sample, but people like Cordell have what appears to be a fetish over him, and treated it like some tragedy when Shero didn't attempt to bring him back.

Otherwise, the collective ability of all  30, now 31 GMs and their scouting staffs to basically have no marginally above replacement level player languishing outside of the NHL for very long is I imagine very, very good.  Let's start with someone like Bennett.  Since, say 1990, how many former first rounders have been essentially dumped by one or more teams for nothing (and wasn't related to injury, severe character issues, fear of going to play abroad, etc.) who turned out to be more than just a guy?  How often do players that get picked up on waivers turn out to be better, or say appreciably better than just some guy?  And then, how often do players actually clear waivers at some point in their career turn into something better than that?  For all of the hockey players that come under any one those categories, if the total number is 30 or less, GMs and scouting staffs collectively are actually a very good authority when it comes to judging who should be in the NHL and who shouldn't.  And that's especially the case since until not that long ago, it was generally thought that every team needed at least one guy that couldn't do anything other than fight.

Cordell and the like have to generate hits, and 'Devils throw away decent but certainly not great player' isn't a headline.

This all ignores the impact of groupthink and the seemingly nonexistent amount of pro scouting beyond advanced scouting that NHL teams seem to do.  How much do NHL teams know about the players on other teams?  How much data do they collect on them, how much video do they have, and so on?  I don't know the answer to that.  Judging by what I've seen in terms of player personnel moves and what GMs tell the media, it does not seem like a whole lot.  Teams might pick a guy up because they liked him in his draft year, or they might pick him up because he's done well against their team in the past.  They might pick him up because the GM or the AGM or the coach had him in a different organization and liked him.  

So sure, you can put all the caveats on to your purported search for the 'diamond in the rough' 1st rounder, but that's ignoring the role of groupthink - NHL teams seem to think, when a guy is put on waivers, not 'Oh, we can get this guy for almost free' but instead asking 'Why are they giving him away for free?'  

A lot of worse players than Beau Bennett will get serious minutes in the NHL this year, and I'm not just talking about goons.  But again, Bennett doesn't do a lot of stuff well, and it's easy to focus on that.

[Triumph]

In addition, almost all of the GMs in the NHL were either NHL players, the son of an NHL GM or coach, or both.  Most of them did not go to college.  The true statistical revolution in the NHL has many limitations - this is one of them, the lack of deeper, reliable data being another - but it didn't really take over baseball until the baseball lifers got thrown out of GM offices and replaced with MBA types.

[Marshall]

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

EDIT:  The other thing I’ll add is that probably the majority of teams, if not all of them at this point, have people who are completely devoted to analytics.  It’s very hard to believe that all GMs are so pig headed that not a single one to this point would take a chance on someone who is supposedly has a highish reward and virtually zero risk.  

I've done work in pro hockey (not NHL), and know a bunch of guys in the NHL, both analytics and other roles (scouting etc)...you'd be surprised how old school of a group it still is. Analytics departments are box checkers for many teams. 

Bennett isn't a diamond in the rough, nor an overly desireable player for all teams, but for NJ and maybe ten other teams he'd definitely be a good player to have and an upgrade on their 8th-13th fortwards.

[sokar]

Wow that one is going to hurt

[RizzMB30]

3 hours ago, sokar said:

Wow that one is going to hurt

Saw the news today while at work.  It sucks to see NHL players to miss entire seasons as I don't think it happens as often in the NHL than the NFL.  He got hurt at the tail end of last season.  Seeing that Clarke MacArthur failed his training camp physical was also pretty fvcking sad.  

[LittleBallofHate]

OK not sure whether I should bring this up again but I thought this was well written & Joel Ward will not be kneeling.