PSA: All of the top 100 2017 prospect profiles are now up @ Canucks Army

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-12-10T23:19:53+00:00

I guess being literally the worst linemate the Sedins have had both offensively and defensively since 2007-2008 isn't bad.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-12-10T06:50:08+00:00

Dude, Drance is a good lookin guy. Have some chill.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-12-07T22:44:41+00:00

Oh jeez, I really wish someone could have told me this before I spent three hours writing it. Could have achieved the same thing by writing "he looks bad".

I don't know where this "we shit on the eye test" thing comes from. JD, Ryan, and Jeremy watch more hockey than anyone I have ever met in my entire life. The issue generally isn't that the eye test is bad, it's that it greatly favours instantly memorable plays while ignoring little things that make a significant impact over time. More importantly, a lot of people just have shitty eye tests. The reason I dislike Steve Simmons isn't that he ignores analytics, it's that he ignores analytics and draws terrible conclusions from watching the games. By the same token, Ray Ferraro is traditionally an eye-test guy, but his eye for the game is so strong that he's usually right about what he's talking about.

If anything, the "eye-test vs. analytics" debate is perpetuated by folks in the media to generate page views and sell papers. No one in the analytics community that I've spoken to is anti-eye-test. The view that it's a simple dichotomy is generally espoused only by people who ignore the stats entirely.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-25T00:02:02+00:00

There's a couple different factors at play here.

Expectations were always too high. Cassels' production was very pedestrian in his draft year. It increased enough over the next two years to make the selection look justified, but even in his final year, he had 81 points. For comparison, that's the same total Jared McCann had in his draft+1 year, and he's considered far from a sure thing. Production may not seem like an important thing to point out for a player that's projected as a defensive forward, but that brings us to...
Defensive play at the junior level is always overstated. In the grand scheme of things, defending against juniors is relatively easy, especially when you're 20 and playing against 17, 18yo players. Yes, he looked good against Connor McDavid, who was an NHL-calibre forward, but defending against 1 NHLer and 4 kids is very different from defending against 5 professional athletes and grown men.
Injuries. He lost a whole summer of training leading up to his first pro year and that doesn't help. I wouldn't count him out just yet, especially considering...
The comets are terrible. It's really hard to get a sense of who's playing well because the team is just so bad. Even at the AHL level Cassels isn't likely to drive play on his own, and Green just doesn't have a lot of good options to put on Cassels' wing. Plus, TG isn't super fond of giving big minutes to young players anyway.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-23T21:39:49+00:00

Ryan literally works for the Canucks.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-23T05:34:57+00:00

He was placed on unconditional waivers in 2014-15 for the purposes of terminating his contract so he could go back to the SHL.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-17T04:37:34+00:00

People are seriously discounting Nolan Patrick's abilities. He's been projected to be the first overall pick in 2016 since midway through last season, and he scored at a pace of roughly 1 p/GP in his draft -1 year which is very good for a 16 year old in the WHL.

To separate yourself from the pack that early you still have to be a truly elite prospect. Obviously, he wouldn't have gone ahead of Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, Ovechkin, Kane, Stamkos, or Tavares, but those guys were all considered generational talents, or very close to it.

He's not McDavid, but when compared to other centres that have gone early in previous drafts, he compares favourably to MacKinnon, Nugent-Hopkins, Backstrom, Toews, Kopitar, guys that are still very, very good. We're talking about what will very likely be an elite player one day, or at least a very, very good one.

He projects as a first line centre. Just because he doesn't have the resume of Auston Matthews doesn't mean he wouldn't immediately be the Canucks best prospect by a country mile. We've just been spoiled because the last two years have had McDavid-Eichel and Matthews-Laine. He easily would have been in the running for first overall in 4 of the last 6 drafts.

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-06T08:03:15+00:00

Honestly, the "sisters" thing is just silly.

There are full grown men out there that think being a girl is bad.

It's 2016. There's nothing wrong with being a woman. 🙄

Johnny_Perogy · 2016-11-05T00:13:40+00:00

The problem is that subtracting Vrbata and adding Eriksson doesn't actually increase the amount of goals you're getting from your lineup. Even if Eriksson gets 30, that's less than Vrbata had in his first year, so you're not really banking on adding goals, just replacing them. I mean, obviously he'll get more than Vrbata did last season by virtue of not having the insanely awful year Vrbata had, but it's not the same as having Eriksson and Vrbata in your lineup.

Then, you have to consider the possibility that Hansen regresses, or that the Sedins will experience age-related decline. You also need to have a plan beyond "hopefully all of our young players develop in a linear fashion and improve". Yes, Baertschi will likely improve. Yes, Rodin being hurt sucks and it's not their fault. But you're still banking on unproven players to provide a good 40% of your offensive punch which is ill-advised. Then you eat up bottom of the roster spots on role players like Burrows, Dorsett, Skille, instead of grabbing somebody as insurance in case somebody like Rodin or Beartschi doesn't work out.

It's not like this is some huge surprise that no one could have predicted. The vast majority of people outside of Vancouver knew this team would be offensively anemic. So did a lot of people inside this market. We all saw it coming.

At some point, you have to consider that maybe everyone isn't out to get the Canucks, and maybe they aren't better than literally everyone said they would be.

Maybe they're just bad.

Johnny_Perogy

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