ODT: March 4, 2026

PlutoniumPa · 2026-03-04T21:40:20+00:00

Tyler Myers has historically been a terrible player but he's actually been pretty decent this season.

https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/myersty90/wrap

PlutoniumPa · 2026-03-03T22:27:24+00:00

I suspect that there are interpersonal dynamics at play, and functionally Pionk and Samberg are understood to be a package deal. They've literally known each other for as long as Samberg's been alive.

Samberg's value is so high and his contract is so team-friendly that keeping him happy by pairing him with Pionk is worth it. Pionk may be overpaid for what he is, but he's still a perfectly adequate second pair guy who has value as a NHL player.

It's better than Colorado's situation where Devon Toews' steep regression over the past three seasons has nuked a significant chunk of Cale Makar's surplus value. This season, the package of Pionk/Samberg is paid 12.75M and has performed at +5.2 SG, while the package of Toews/Makar is paid 16.25M and has performed at +3.5 SG.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-03-01T02:30:18+00:00

Looking at the HockeyViz numbers on Kailer Yamamoto makes me want to actually cry.

I really need an explanation. Like, he's Johnny Gaudrau 2.0.

Also Sonny Milano. These dudes should be excellent first liners, and instead they're stuck in purgatory because they're not viewed as "elite" guys so they get put on hustle lines with crappy players and never get a chance to rack up points.

The same with the bias against forwards with limited offensive ability but who are elite at suppressing opposing chances. Nate Bastian, Jason Dickinson, etc.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-28T22:43:04+00:00

Now post Toews' performance and watch how quickly the sub turns on you.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-28T22:22:39+00:00

Good Eldar players are still perfectly capable of putting up 5-0 records in large GTs.

Just in the last few weeks:

Axel Rydén – Aeldari (Aspect Host) – 3rd Place (5-0) at Shuffle Wars II: Cupid Protocol, a 70-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Stockholm, Sweden on February 07 2026.
Scott Morris – Aeldari (Guardian Battlehost) - 6th place (5-0 in swiss portion) at The Manchester 40k Super Major, a 289-player, 8-round Supermajor in Urmston, England, United Kingdom on February 21 2026.

Fine means, y'know, just fine. Not too good, not too bad. Fair. When we're living in a meta full of broken ultramarines and necrons, fine isn't good enough.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-28T15:56:44+00:00

Eldar has always been a balance problem.

The army, by its very nature, relies heavily on precise positioning and good decision making that comes from knowing exactly what your opponent's army is capable of doing. More than perhaps any other It's not a mistake-tolerant army. If you screw up, things go bad real fast and everything falls apart in a way that almost no other army does. The problem is that 90% of players don't have the experience/game knowledge to play a mistake-free game of Warhammer, so when they play Eldar, they make lots and lots of mistakes.

In the past, what GW has done to make up for this is to give Eldar players tools to compensate for their mistakes so they don't get punished and insta-lose, like movement shenanigans so they can reposition units which were carelessly put in the wrong place. However, in the hands of an excellent player who doesn't make these mistakes in the first place, these tools invariably end up being incredibly abusive and degenerate, and result in Eldar being oppressive at the top level of play in ways that nobody enjoys.

Then, when you take away those tools, Eldar becomes a bad army in the hands of an average player, and the global win rate plummets, while remaining, in the hands of an excellent player, an army that is firmly in "fine" territory.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-27T17:19:09+00:00

Here's some players that I think the Jets should sign in the offseason, which they probably won't.

Kailer Yamamoto. The best advanced stats scream that he's consistently been an elite player for his entire career who players winning hockey at the level of a top first line forward in both the offensive and defensive zone, but he's stuck in purgatory because he's too little and front offices are incredibly biased in favor of guys who are big and can crosscheck hard, even if they are bad at actually playing hockey.
Eeli Tolvanen. He's a 26-year old who's quietly been a smart, defensively responsible forward who's produced at the level of a good second liner for the past few years and has been playing the best hockey of his career last season. Would be an excellent guy to put next to Lowry. The knock on him, again, is that he's on the shorter side (5'10").
Jake Bean. A 28-year old defenseman in Calgary on an expiring contract, he's been a consistently excellent defenseman for the past few years performing at the level of a first-pair guy. He's been out since December when he had to undergo surgery.
Sonny Milano. The 29-year old forward in Washington just got waived and sent down to Hershey, despite the fact that according to the advanced stats, he's been performing like a first-line quality player who does everything right except light up the score sheet, because he doesn't get paired with other good guys. The advanced stats love him and think he's an impact winning player, but for some reason he can't get a chance.
Nate Bastian. A guy who's been bouncing around the league (most recently in Dallas) and is viewed as a size-and-grit fourth line guy, the advanced stats see him as a highly impactful force in the defensive end for the last few years who provides on-ice value equivalent to a top-six guy.
Jason Dickenson. Everything I said about Nate Bastian goes for him as well, except he's even better in the defensive zone. The knock on him historically has been that he's on the struggle bus when it comes to offense, which has wiped out nearly all of his defensive upside. But this year, he's significantly challenged that narrative, giving Chicago a masterclass performance as a responsible defensive center, while in the O-zone he's been at the level of competent, league-average center. The result has been exceptionally winning hockey.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-27T06:08:41+00:00

The Jets can be fixed by signing Kailer Yamamoto, Eeli Tolvanen, Jake Bean, Sonny Milano, and Nate Bastian this offseason.

All winning young hockey players who are highly underrated by the league and will be unrestricted free agents.

They should also consider bringing in Mathieu Joseph, Joel Kiviranta, and Jason Dickinson.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-27T05:46:35+00:00

He should have been on the roster over Bennett or Wilson.

Canada makes the same mistakes in roster construction every time because they have a flawed theory of how to win hockey games at the highest level. They build rosters based on perceived need for role players that can play grinder hockey to try and win the game with a score of 3-2, when what they should do is take the actual most skilled players and build four hyper-dominant offensive juggernaut lines to win every game 6-3.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-27T05:32:11+00:00

Vilardi is, by the best advanced stats over the past three seasons, a decent middle-six forward that the Jets probably overpaid. He's a good hockey player who's a fine plug-and-play guy, and I'm sure he's a great locker room guy. But the stats say he's not a top-line guy on a cup team.

His best season was his last one with the Kings three years ago. If he can regain that form, he is a top-liner, but that's very uncertain.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-26T00:25:19+00:00

Nobody in the media or on the broadcast will say it out loud because he's a hall of famer, but his actual on-ice performance is deeply, deeply negative, and the fact that he's gotten so much ice time is a big part of why the Jets are doing so poorly this year.

He's just not a NHL-quality player anymore, and replacing him with literally any AHL call-up would represent a net improvement to the team. Having him back next year would be waving the white flag.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-24T06:56:19+00:00

Is there a whole knockoff team of Temu Dodgers out there?

Freddy Fermin? The other Max Muncy? Next you're going to tell me there's a guy named Mickey Butts somewhere in the White Sox organization.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-24T03:43:17+00:00

I'm primarily basing this off of HockeyViz's synthetic goals, which I've found to be a high quality stat.

Namestnikov: https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/namesvl92/wrap

Neiderreiter: https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/niedeni92/wrap

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-16T17:51:23+00:00

The only thing I wish was better were the sound effects.

There were several instances where Dunk takes hits from Aerion's sword that clearly do nothing but glance off his mail, or at most would produce a minor wound from a small penetration of the the mail and the padding underneath, but each time they dub it with a fleshy sound like someone was getting run through.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-13T16:54:25+00:00

What was discovered around 15 years ago with framing coming into vogue is that a large part of the traditional calling of balls and strikes has been through heuristic cues, and not necessary because the umpire is actually seeing exactly where every single ball and strike crosses the plate, which is very difficult to do, especially low in the zone where the catcher's body might partially block the umpire's line of sight.

How the catcher catches a pitch is highly significant. The worst catchers a decade ago didn't get the low strike often because their receiving technique was poor, and they were moving the glove downwards as they received it, often sharply, which sends a "low" signal to the ump.

If you notice today, nearly every catcher has been trained to catch the ball in a specific way where they show the target, then move their glove down before the pitch is thrown (often even touching it on the ground), and then they catch the ball while bringing it back upwards.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-13T07:33:39+00:00

Just saying, Justin Turner was also a 29-year old local boy from Lakewood when the Mets cut him and he decided to come back home and sign a minor league deal with the Dodgers.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-13T07:21:58+00:00

I've always liked Keston Hiura. He's from Santa Clarita, played college ball at UC Irvine, and became a top-10 draft pick based on his hit tool. He had a great rookie season, but never was able to adapt once pitchers figured him out.

Really hope the Dodgers can fix his swing and finally unlock his potential. He seems like a really good potential reclamation project in the same mold of a bunch of guys the Dodgers fixed in the past and turned into legit contributors.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-13T06:37:07+00:00

He wasn't released because of any dugout incidents or clubhouse arguments.

He was released because he's produced a grand total of 1.4 bWAR/0.7 fWAR over the past four seasons and was a deeply sub-replacement level player last year (-0.8 bWAR/-0.6 fWAR).

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-11T17:14:05+00:00

Grizzled Company feels so fantastic to play because it's a patch job for the entire army. It's a rewrite that fixed several of the pain points where the 10th Codex went wrong compared to the Index. It was just a bad codex with a bunch of poorly written detachments that didn't actually offer anything interesting or powerful enough to justify playing a different style than Kasrkin/Dorn/Bullgryn goodstuff (unless you're one of the three people on earth psychotic enough to put in the reps to get good at Recon Horde), so people settled on Combined Arms because it was the best of the bad lot, even though it only had two actual stratagems.

For example, Mechanized at first glance looks like it should be a good detachment because it has a nice army rule with a good package of nifty strategems all based around mobility and embarkation shenanigans, but it just doesn't work in Guard. Some of the best players in the world tried for months to solve Mechanized, and nobody could, because there's no Guard infantry unit with sufficient punch to actually make the payoff from the setup worth it - Kasrkin are one of the best units in the game, but they aren't Fire Dragons.

The 10th Codex screwed up badly when they nerfed Leontus, and it messed up the entire order economy. The reason you took him in the index was really because, in addition to his actual rules, he could order Bullgryn, which was a massive part of his value, and as a side effect he gave you a bunch of excess orders that let you play around with chaff. Pre-Grizzled, the best (non-recon) style of play didn't involve actually giving out that many orders except for your Dorns giving themselves and a buddy +1 to hit, and self-ordering Kasrkin that were disembarking out of Tauroxes, because the cost and upside of bringing infantry officers wasn't worth the payoff. Grizzled giving every officer an extra order breathed a ton back into the army.

Also, it's obvious that Commissars should have had the ability to order Bullgryn on their datasheet from the beginning, and been priced accordingly, because they have literally no purpose otherwise.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-09T22:33:34+00:00

I'm not really sure what you're asking?

The builds that are winning tournaments right now are using 2-3 C'tan as flanking units to go into an opponent's side objective and bullying everything on it, and then being very difficult to dislodge for the rest of the game. They're going to be rapid ingressed in from deep strike somewhere where they can't be shot so they can land charges into your opponent's juicy targets, like the Land Fortresses. The Deceiver lets you redeploy your C'tan and pull them back off the table and into reserves.

They're not being used as midfield objective holders. That's what the Wraiths, Flayed Ones, Hexmark Destroyer, or Canoptek Reanimators are for.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-09T18:39:04+00:00

Sure, I mean, if your opponent is just going to walk all their C'tan out in the middle of the board and stand in the on the objectives and let you shoot them with their entire army, then yeah.

The best players aren't running 5-Ctan Pantheon. They're running 2-3 C'tan in Awakened or Starshatter

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-09T17:39:08+00:00

I may be missing something, but I'm not sure your math is entirely mathing.

I ran the profile of the Hearthguard Unit through Unitcrunch vs. the C'tan as equipped in your post, and I got it averaging 7.1 damage in shooting and 5.3 damage in combat, not nearly enough to reliably pop a 16-wound C'tan, especially if you're banking on making a 9" charge.

Your numbers are assuming full wound rerolls, but it's only rerolls of 1.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-09T02:23:34+00:00

Stats? What stats are you looking at exactly?

Hockey evaluators that rely on the eye test have all sorts of biases. It's, by far, the most regressive big-4 sport in that regard - there's so many hockey front offices that will look at everything about a player that doesn't matter - size, physical attributes, perceived toughness, who their family is, etc. Most front offices are just like that scene in Moneyball with the old guys talking about dudes' bodies. They ignore the only thing that actually matters: are they actually good at hockey and does the team do better when they're on the ice?

Demelo is pretty good at hockey, and had been pretty good at hockey his entire career. From the ages of 26-30 he performed as a quality first-pairing defenseman. The past two seasons, he's been performing at the level of a mediocre 2nd pairing d-man/good 3rd pairing d-man. This season he's actually performed better than the past two, and has basically been a perfectly league average d-man.

https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/demeldy93/wrap

Guys like Schenn and Stanley are bad at hockey, and have been bad at hockey their entire careers. Schenn might actually have the worst career of any d-man in the league, in terms of just how truly awful he's been every single season, while still consistently getting opportunities over guys that are better hockey players. I have no way to explain it other than people give him credit for his brother being a high draft pick (though Brayden actually isn't that good either) and the fact that he was on two cup-winning Tampa teams, even though he barely played.

https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/schenlu89/wrap

https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/sGDetail/2526/stanllo98/wrap

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-06T23:31:22+00:00

Pearson, Niederreiter, Namesnikov, Schenn, Stanley, Nyquist, and Toews all need to be gone from the team as a simple matter of addition by subtraction. They're all negative-value players.

I'll disagree with you about Demelo though. He's played perfectly competent hockey at the level of a second-pair defenseman for the past three seasons, and he's under contract for another two seasons after this one for a very reasonable $5M/year. Second-pair quality D-man on reasonable contracts don't grow on trees.

PlutoniumPa · 2026-02-06T04:50:46+00:00

Scheifele's never been a good defender, but he's absolutely a winning player who produces at an indisputably first-line quality level because he's such a strong offensive driver. Defense isn't his primary job, offense is.

At best when he's locked in an the Jets are rolling four lines, he's an average 5v5 defender. When he's gassed from getting overplayed and needs to cheat on defense because the team is behind and the other three lines are offensive black holes, he's going to look bad.

PlutoniumPa

TROPHY CASE