Topper wrote:
Do you really want me to get into your statistical analysis of the Sedin season? For now I will leave it in your words.
extremely simple method
There are far more flaws to your work than you noted and the huge holes in your assumptions is only the beginning.
I do think there is something to your premise, I just don't think your statistical argument stands up to any tests to support it.
Yeah, I think you're right. It wasn't one of my better posts, and there were many more holes than the ones I mentioned. The premise was the best part and I do stand by the thrust of the argument I was trying to make, but psudo-statistical methodology did not help me. The second best part was the eye test stuff at the end, which at least had the benefit of not pretending to be objective.
I probably should've stuck to my original plan not to address it at all.
Mondi wrote:
With all the "why can't you be more like Lloyd Braun" going on in this thread, no one has really asked you any of the hard questions...
Fantastic post overall, Mondi, but you get an extra special gold star for the way it began.
I like your lineups too, for the most part.
I meant what I said earlier about how Horvat is probably the most NHL-ready of the kids, and I really do hope he makes the team. But, I think you have to be extremely careful to avoid bringing up a prospect with no AHL eligibility if you can't be almost completely sure he's ready. I stand by the idea that Horvat needs to have a fantastic camp and first nine games if he's going to stick. I don't think he's enough of a can't-miss prospect to be an automatic at this point. That said, I'm far more comfortable with him in his draft+2 year than in draft+1, as I also mentioned earlier.
Also, in an ideal world, I don't want to see either Santorelli or (especially) Mattias penciled in on the second line to start the year. I see Mattias as better off in the bottom six, and I like Santorelli as a utility player who can fill in any forward role when needed, in case of injuries or a desire to mix up the lines. Obviously, the world is far from ideal, so it's not likely that we'll be able to pick up two top-six forwards with the 6-7 million or so we have to play with. If we do buy out Booth, the odds of it happening improves.
Mondi wrote:
1. Do you think the Keith Ballard trade was reasonable?
I don't think the value proposition was ever fully there, but at the time I grudgingly liked it because of the specific needs of the team.
Two important aspects that have to be understood to appreciate where the trade was coming from are that Grabner was not likely to make the team out of camp and was waiver eligible (as Florida learned), and that Gillis didn't know Hammer was going to sign. If either of these two points hadn't been the case (or if I'm misreading the situation regarding them), the trade's a bad deal, full stop.
I also was a vocal supporter of Ballard the player for his first two seasons, which was an obvious mistake. I was a fan of his wheels, and put too much emphasis on the hip injury while trying to figure the reason for his ineffectiveness during the first season. I'm willing to eat crow on that one. The trade was obviously a mistake in hindsight. Too many of the "what if" possibilities were against us. What if Grabner turned into a goal scorer? What if the pick (Howden) turned out to be a star? What if Ballard only looked like a big fish because of the small ponds of Florida and Phoenix? And if that's so, what about his long term contract?
Too many question marks to make it an good plan A, and if we're talking about shitty plan Bs to fill that top-4 D we needed so badly, we probably could have found one that wasn't much worse after establishing the UFA market's kindness.
Bad trade.
Mondi wrote:
2. Do you think the Derek Roy trade was reasonable?
Absolutely, yes, it was reasonable. Obviously it didn't work out.
Deadline deals are tough to judge and I feel that buying rentals is generally a bad idea, with only Lappy and Higgins standing out as good value in recent years. That said, all too often these deals come to be judged not by the actual merits of the trade but by the buying team's overall performance, which isn't ideal.
Roy initially seemed to suit our needs very well. We desperately needed a center between the Kesler injury and Gillis' decision regarding Malhotra. We also desperately needed to upgrade our scoring so we could take pressure off the twins.
At the time of the trade, I had figured that once Kesler came back, he'd likely move to the wing alongside Roy and would fit well stylistically, balancing the offense and taking pressure off the twins, but that never happened. Instead, Roy became the defacto Malhotra replacement, which was not a role he was effective in. A solid playmaker means little without a shooter to play with, and from that point on, Roy did not fit on the team at all.
The price tag wasn't outrageous, nor was it a steal. K-Con seemed like a long-shot to me by that point. Offense-first defensemen have to be extremely skilled in order to stick in the league, and he didn't seem to have that high level of skill needed to make up for being a likely defensive liability. The second round pick was painful, but, Roy seemed to have good value. It certainly looked night-and-day better than the last time the Canucks had traded 2nds for rentals. That year we got Carney and Noronen as return for a second each.
Roy had scored 81 points in the past, and was within a dozen points of the ppg mark for five consecutive seasons. He was only 29, which didn't seem old enough to explain the decline, which, at the time, he was only a year and a half into. He also had this promising quote in his first interview: "I'm healthy now. At the start of the year I had couple of little minor injuries and that set me back a bit but I've been skating really well." There was reason to believe that he'd be far better for us than how he ended up.
I was in favour of the deal at the time, and it's hard to argue with the size of the hole we had in our lineup. We seemed to be a team that could contend with a bit more offensive balance, and so yeah... reasonable, but didn't work out.
Mondi wrote:
3. Do you think the way Gillis handled the Luongo/Schneider situation was reasonable?
Nope. He was handcuffed in a bunch of different respects, but his communication throughout was awful. I don't think there's any reason for the team to have essentially crowned Schneider the team's new starter when Schneids, as good as he looked, had never had a year with even 30 NHL starts. Gillis showed a lot of cockyness by painting himself into a corner where trading Lu was so telegraphed that the plan B became a PR nightmare. By being the architect of his own desperation, he also gave up a ton of leverage, which surely would have helped in the Lu negotiations.
That said, I don't particularly object to either resulting goaltender trade, considering the lack of leverage and necessity of making the deals. I do view the whole situation as something that could have been avoided with better communication.
Mondi wrote:
4. Do you think giving Luongo that contract after that first Hawks series was a good move?
Yes. Although obviously, again, it didn't work out in hindsight. I don't think we could've kept Lu on a short term deal without giving up 7+ mil per year. In turn, we'd have had to drop some other salary to afford that. Therefore, I think there's a pretty good chance that the dropped salary would have impacted our depth enough that the cup run might very well never have happened. That was a seriously deep squad, and Lu's cap hit going down by almost $1.5mil instead of going up played a big part in allowing us to build that depth. There's a reason why the league thought we'd gotten away with one when the contract was signed.
The two factors that ended up making the contract look bad were the new CBA and Schneider blowing away everyone's expectations. It's easy to forget that when the contract was signed, Schneids had only played 8 NHL games, with 5 starts, a 3.38 GAA and a .877 SV%. There was reason to think he would be an NHL-level tender based on his success at the AHL level, but no reason to think he'd be elite, which Lu certainly was. Lots of goalies in the past have looked great in the AHL and never found their form in the big league.
Mondi wrote:
5. Do you think making Luongo the captain was a good movie?
Nope. It was silly to think that a goaltender would be able to fulfill all the captain duties on and off the ice, and it provided a distraction with no tangible benefit. Goalies have been part of leadership groups forever without requiring Cs on their jerseys. If it was really so important to make Lu feel all warm, fuzzy and special, give him an A. Even that would have been silly though...
Mondi wrote:
6. Do you think not buying out Booth last summer was a good move (or wait was he hurt?)...how about are you okay with David Booth, period?
I think you're right that he was hurt? Not 100% sure though...
Anyhoo, guess I'll just respond this with a "what to do with Booth now" answer.
I'm generally a big fan of advanced statistics, but they're only useful when it's remembered that they're only one tool in a large toolbox. Booth's advanced stats paint an interesting picture. He seems, on the surface, to be a phenomenal possession player, who suffers from bad luck. However, bad luck looks a lot less like luck and a lot more like a problem the larger the sample size becomes, and at this point in his career, it's pretty obvious that luck is not the explanation.
The eye test backs this up too. We see that when Booth is on the ice, the team seems to be able to win more pucks thanks to his mix of speed, strength, and tenacity, and get more shots off, but many of the shots are extremely low percentage. In the offensive zone, therefore, Booth is likely an anchor when he's on a line with more skilled players. On a line that's more concerned with keeping possession and shutting down the other team, I think he fits very well.
The player I've described is a reasonably valuable piece, but isn't worth anywhere near the same ballpark as $4.25m. Where the keep vs buyout equation gets interesting is when we see that he has only one year left on the deal. The buyout is probably the right option, but not necessarily so.
I think that if Gillis doesn't expect to find the right players with fair-value contracts to fill in our roster and reach the cap next season, you consider keeping him. Basically, I don't want us signing a new guy to a potentially harmful long-term deal just because we have extra empty space next year. That raises the possibility that we may have an extra few million available that would be the difference between Booth's salary and a hypothetical replacement. If so, maybe it would make more sense to keep him next year with the idea that we could probably resign him to a deal that better matches his value in 2015/16
Also, this is a little bit silly, but Booth seems like someone I'd really hate if I knew him. He seems utterly naive, and not someone who challenges the cultural norms he was raised with. This seems to stand out among the locker room's personality, and if he isn't a fit in the locker-room, that means he goes. But yeah, this paragraph is totally speculative and totally silly.
Mondi wrote:
7. Do you think Kassian for Hodgson was a good move? If so, do you think Kassian is a smart hockey player?
Good move, yes. Smart player, no. It's pretty obvious that he isn't a guy that stands out for intelligence, but I haven't seen a reason to conclude that he's especially dumb either. Sometimes, it can be difficult to tell.
Bieksa is a great example. Tons of people have called him dumb over the years, but as he's done more interviews and we've learned more about him, it's clear that he's very smart. He just takes chances on the ice and needed some years in the league before he was able to get a handle on the best times to take those chances.
Kassian seems to be making progress in terms of how he thinks the game, so I'm willing to give him more time before labeling him dumb.
But yeah... it really seemed that Hodgson's head was too big for his skill-set, and he had to go. Kass was a solid pickup, and I think we'll see him evolve into a very good player over the next threeish years. He seems to be following a development arc that isn't unusual for a power forward, and we've seen lots of teams give up on power forwards around Kassian's age just to see them find a groove in their mid-20s.
Mondi wrote:
8. Do you like the return for Luongo?
See my post on the matter here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10249&start=75#p195717
Mondi wrote:
9. Do you like hiring of Torts?
Yes, I do. That's a question I answered earlier in the topic. I question his handling of the twins' line (though I'm not confident about that questioning), and I felt the Calgary incident was a near-fireable offense, but I've liked everything else I've seen. Overall, I'd keep him around and I like the hiring.
Mondi wrote:
10. Are you okay with letting guys like Erhoff, Salo, Samuelsson, and Torres walk over the years (this is a bit of softball)?
I like how your softball question is actually four questions with four distinct answers. I'll try to be brief with each.
Samuelsson: fine with it.
Torres: If there's truth to the rumours that he didn't get along with his teammates and a number of them wanted him off the team, then I'm fine with it. Otherwise, I'm not fine.
Salo: Tricky one. I generally applaud efforts to make the team younger without taking steps backwards in play, and I feel bringing in Garrison while losing Salo was an effort towards that end. However, Salo is a terrifically steady and intelligent player, and by all accounts a terrific leader. Considering his first post-Vancouver contract was only for 1 year, 2 mil, if we'd had the option to keep him at that price, there's no reason we shouldn't have done it.
Ehrhoff: Again, not so simple. I think it's clear he was a very important player to our team, and a serious effort should have been made to resign him. However, the rumours at the time were that he wanted a pretty exorbitant salary. I feel like he might be one of those players that didn't really want to stay here and purposely priced himself out of Gillis' comfort zone... but that's more silly speculation. If the price were reasonable, then obviously he should have been resigned.
It always sucks when a team loses good players for nothing, but realistically, that's just hockey. It happens to every team for a variety of reasons, not all of which are in the GM's control.
Mondi wrote:
Just FYI, I'm sure you'll have a way of defending most, if not all of the moves GMMG has made.
Hope I haven't disappointed you.
Mondi wrote:
But, to call people who are calling a spade a spade a bunch of idiots, or whatever it was, whilst proclaiming yourself a reasoned and rational poster, dismisses as out of hand a lot of what I believe are reasonable criticisms of guy who done little to improve a team that was dynamic just three short seasons ago.
Spades being spades has nothing to do with what made me call people out for making knee-jerk statements without thinking things through. But, of course, there is some obvious ego in my posts. I did mention that the OP, in particular, was a lot more aggressive then I tend to be. That said, I personally prefer reading posters who use a sense of ego as a rhetorical device in their posts, even if it's just to get a laugh. I like it in other forms of media as well, as long as it's not taken too seriously.
*shrug* Different strokes for different folks.