Tanner Pearson traded

[Louis Lipps Service]

To Vancouver For Erik Gundbranson (D)

[Louis Lipps Service]

He's a -27 on the season, by far the worst on that team. Next closest player on the Canucks is a -16.

Let me guess, we panicked over the Dumo/Letang injuries and signed another albatross defenseman?

[FC]

Nope

Signed the 2nd toughest player in the NHL behind Ryan Reeves.

He is an absolute sledge hammer...Who has played for some brutal teams.

This screams Justin Schultz to me....The stats douche bags on twitter are hammering the deal.

I will say this....Teams will be very leery to fuck with the Pens stars...Unlike Reeves EG gives no option. You're fighting or turtling

He exudes Jam nasty and he is the ultimate team player. He is not a great skater. He will never be confused for Letang

IMO the talking heads are going to eat so much shit over this deal

[Donnie Brasco]

I think Grub fucking sucks. I don't care that he fights

The only spin on this for me is we got rid of Tanner Pearson who seemed to not fit on this team. Which is hard to do as a LW and on a team absolutely DESPERATE for LW help

https://www.pensburgh.com/2019/2/25/182 ... xrRDVUaHYQ

***************
He is relatively young at 27-years-old, big, and a right-hand shot, but all the good traits seem to stop there. Gudbranson is signed for two more seasons at a $4.0 million cap hit, continuing the Pens’ trend of overpaying lower pair defensemen who struggle to defend and don’t create offense
***************

[Louis Lipps Service]

I think Grub fucking sucks. I don't care that he fights

The only spin on this for me is we got rid of Tanner Pearson who seemed to not fit on this team. Which is hard to do as a LW and on a team absolutely DESPERATE for LW help

https://www.pensburgh.com/2019/2/25/182 ... xrRDVUaHYQ

***************
He is relatively young at 27-years-old, big, and a right-hand shot, but all the good traits seem to stop there. Gudbranson is signed for two more seasons at a $4.0 million cap hit, continuing the Pens’ trend of overpaying lower pair defensemen who struggle to defend and don’t create offense
***************

This is where I am, too. Another slow and lumbering defenseman seems about the last thing we need right now.

[FC]

I decided not 2 post it. But if anyone is bored they should seek out the Justin Schultz trade thread from here.

It titled 2015-16 General Penguins/NHL thread...Its a great read.

BTW I blast the deal. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I look like a fuckin idiot. Wont be the 1st or last time

[fractalsteel]

He's a -27 on the season, by far the worst on that team. Next closest player on the Canucks is a -16.

Let me guess, we panicked over the Dumo/Letang injuries and signed another albatross defenseman?

With ZAR and Blueger coming along Pearson was expendable.

As always I'm going to watch a few games before I make a worth determination.
Is he going to be ready to go tomorrow night? Have to figure Riikola is playing which is not a bad option to bring from Nacho land.

[FC]

Pens also added Chris Wideman

He is small with offensive upside

He can fill a void for a few games

[Orangesteel]

Wideman seems like a decent pick up.

[Donnie Brasco]

I decided not 2 post it. But if anyone is bored they should seek out the Justin Schultz trade thread from here.

It titled 2015-16 General Penguins/NHL thread...Its a great read.

BTW I blast the deal. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I look like a fuckin idiot. Wont be the 1st or last time

These 2 players couldn't be any more different
Schultzs underlying numbers suggested he helped whoever was on the ice despite being on a horrid Edmonton team

Grub has no such metrics and never has. He's slightly less bad than jj.
We need guys on the back end who can move the puck, not more crease clearers

[Ice]

A little more worried about what this says about Letang and Dumoulin, but I'm willing to wait and see. FC being fired up, and the hockey fights video, is about the only good news I've seen on Gud. Hopefully, Wideman works out, too.

[Orangesteel]

Is Letang’s injury solely from when he was tackled by Gostisbhere?

[FC]

I decided not 2 post it. But if anyone is bored they should seek out the Justin Schultz trade thread from here.

It titled 2015-16 General Penguins/NHL thread...Its a great read.

BTW I blast the deal. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I look like a fuckin idiot. Wont be the 1st or last time

These 2 players couldn't be any more different
Schultzs underlying numbers suggested he helped whoever was on the ice despite being on a horrid Edmonton team

Grub has no such metrics and never has. He's slightly less bad than jj.
We need guys on the back end who can move the puck, not more crease clearers

The players are far different(Style of game)....The situations both players are/were in are very similar.

Schultz was a -22 and -17 the two years before he arrived

So yeah um I am not a metrics guy when it comes to hockey or football....They have no place in my world. I read a great article which I cannot find about hockey metrics. The metrics made average to below average players better than all time greats.

Lets wait and see.

Grub will be nothing more than the 5/6 D men.

Grub is the furthest thing from a plug...He can skate. He will not be confused with Letang Barzal or Mcdavid. He is a better skater than Scuderi or Gill. Comparable to Ian Cole.

Grub's ability to fight makes other Pens players a little taller.. A little braver.

The Pens need a nuclear option...I understand the success the team had without one.

Letang Malkin Rust Horny even Sid cant help themselves...They are proud players.

If Grub slows down Simmons Wilson or Ferland a half a stride its a great deal IMO.

I think Grub has a far better game than most fans...Lets hope I am right

[Louis Lipps Service]

I decided not 2 post it. But if anyone is bored they should seek out the Justin Schultz trade thread from here.

It titled 2015-16 General Penguins/NHL thread...Its a great read.

BTW I blast the deal. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. I look like a fuckin idiot. Wont be the 1st or last time

These 2 players couldn't be any more different
Schultzs underlying numbers suggested he helped whoever was on the ice despite being on a horrid Edmonton team

Grub has no such metrics and never has. He's slightly less bad than jj.
We need guys on the back end who can move the puck, not more crease clearers

The players couldn't be far different(Style of game)....The situations both players are/were in are very similar.

Schultz was a -22 and -17 the two years before he arrived

If I read about these garbage metrics that have Paul Coffey Larry Robinson and Denis Potvin as inferior players to Sergi Zubov Norm McCiver and Brian Rolston I may fucking puke.

So yeah um I am not a metrics guy when it comes to hockey or football....They have no place in my world

That would be fine if he added anything besides being a fighter, which I don't really care about. I can't find anyone saying ANYTHING positive about this guy other than being good at punching things.

I did, however, find a 28 page thread on the Canucks message board where every single person in it is celebrating this deal.

The term "addition by subtraction" is used quite liberally.

So we have that going for us, which is nice.

If this guy is as slow and plodding as many are saying, that means we now have 3 defensemen that absolutely cannot be paired together under any scenario. JJ, this guy and Maatta. Put any of those two on the ice at the same time and we're guaranteed to get torched, much like we saw earlier in the year with JJ and Maatta on the same pair. When everyone is healthy again, maybe that isn't such a big deal. But one or two injuries and that could get dicey.

Oh, and we're paying $4M/year for this "luxury" for 2 more years after this one.

[FC]

As you can see I edited my post.

I have been a fan of Grub for awhile. I actually hoped the Pens would make the deal.

He is not slow

He is not plodding. He was asked to play 20-25 physical minutes a night(prior to this season)

The Canucks play a garbage system
They have a garbage coach and manager
The team is wasting Bo Horvat and Brock Boeser and they will manage to fuck up Elias Petterson

I believe a change of scene and circumstances may bring out the best...Playing in Florida and Vancouver he was entrenched with unrealistic expectations...He was the 3rd overall pick in the 2010 NHL draft for a reason

Before you make up your mind he is a dumpster fire lets see what he brings for at least 3 games?

BTW I hate Jack Johnson. I dislike Matta he should spend the entire summer skating and working on his speed and ability to skate

[Obviously]

I'm still hoping one of these days I'll see Maata's name in a trade thread.

[Hacksaw Jim Duggan]

Erik Gudbranson is a terrible hockey player. That's an understatement. He literally might be the worst hockey player in the NHL. From a defensive perspective, he is.

He's so bad, he had to apologize on his way out of Vancouver for being so fucking bad.
He's so bad, a sports show did an entire game recap showing how fucking bad he is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWyPU3BAQxw
He's so bad, fucking this... https://i.imgur.com/p3Ql6Sk.gifv


I'll be very generic here to try and prove this without using much in the "fancy stats" category.

1) The Enforcer

First off, Gudbranson isn't really even a fighter. In his 8 years in the NHL, he's fought 31 times, a little less than four fights a year. To put that into perspective, Ryan Reaves has dropped the gloves 134 times in that time frame. Deryk Engelland, a comparable player in size, position, and reputation, has 64 (more than double) fights to his name. Of Gudbranson's 31 fights, he's only participated in 7 in the past three years, exactly one more than brawler Evgeni Malkin. A reduced number of fights seems to be a trend over the last half decade. It's almost as if teams are no longer employing goons and enforcers and instead just having players in the game that can play and score and win.

Gudbranson isn't actually a physical player either. He ranks 44th in the NHL in hits, right under guys like Matt Niskanen. Remember that physical force Matt Niskanen?
17-18 he was 130th in the league, under Olli Maatta
16-17 he was 338th, well...
15-16 81st, under Ben Lovejoy at 76th

Let's play with the narrative...again...that Gudbranson is some sort of physical deterrent to other teams, that he'll somehow be able to protect star players by his sheer existence. (By the way, how many games has Crosby or Malkin lost due to cheap shots since Reaves has been missing? Ohhhh.) I don't really know why we're still talking about physicality and taking a pound of flesh and equating it to winning hockey games. Did we learn nothing from the 17-page Ryan Reaves thread?

I'll just repost a link to an Adam Gretz article from 2014.

https://www.cbssports.com/nhl/news/there-is-very-little-teams-can-do-to-protect-their-star-players/

Here's an interesting excerpt from that post

Let's take a look at another example from this past week when Jaromir Jagr, the New Jersey Devils' best player, was injured when Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Robert Bortuzzo crushed him with a late hit that ended up earning Bortuzzo a two-game suspension. Throughout the course of the game leading up to that hit, Jagr and Bortuzzo had been going after each other. That is to be expected considering the type of player that Bortuzzo is -- a physical player, and that is the way he has to play to be useful in the NHL. When he is defending a guy like Jagr his job is to hit him and make life miserable because he is simply not going to be able to outskate him or outskill him. That physical play can lead to some chippiness back-and-forth, which is going to leave Jagr's teammates unhappy.

And it did. While Jagr and Bortuzzo were having their little battles, Devils forward Jordin Tootoo had repeatedly been trying to get Bortuzzo to fight to answer for the physical way he had been playing against Jagr. Bortuzzo declined every time (which he has every right to do). Then, just a few minutes after Tootoo's offer to drop the gloves, and with Tootoo on the ice, Bortuzzo leveled Jagr with a late hit that knocked him out for the remainder of the night.

Following the game, Tootoo was furious and spoke passionately about his role, why he's there, and what he's supposed to do. It unintentionally showed why the mindset is flawed.

Let's revisit:

"Jagr's our best player and whenever somebody takes a run at him it's my job to make sure that doesn't happen again," Tootoo said Tuesday night.

"I asked the guy to go, countless times, and when you're a player that is going to run around and do [expletive] like that to our best players, it's my job to take action and make sure it stops right there."

And that's the thing. Tootoo did try to take action, and he did try to make sure it stopped. But it didn't. And not only did it not stop, it continued with Tootoo on the ice and ended with Jagr leaving the game after an illegal hit. When asked if it would carry over to the next time they play, Tootoo said he won't forget what number Bortuzzo wears. The two will probably fight if they're both in the lineup, but again, what is that going to change? It's not going to stop Bortuzzo from playing physical because that's what got him to the NHL and it's what is going to keep him in the NHL.

I typed the following in Google "suspended hit Canucks"

Panthers' Matheson suspended two games for hit on Canucks' Pettersson
https://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/n ... pettersson

Martel won't receive a suspension for hit that injured Canucks' Stecher
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/martel- ... on-canucks

I found these two on the first page. Of note, the Canucks player injured in the first link was superstar rookie Elias Pettersson.

Erik Gudbranson played 18 minutes that night. He did not prevent anything. He didn't even drop the gloves.

In fact, unless he's getting triggered that someone hit him and taking retaliatory penalties, he's not doing shit.

2) A bad player is a bad player. Period.

For a general NHL fan, common names of terrible defensemen in the league usually include Gudbranson, Jack Johnson, Dion Phaneuf, Kris Russell, and maybe one or two more names. The Penguins now have two of these guys.

By defaulting to physicality to justify a player's value, you're no better than the people who tried to justify a player's value with advanced stats. A bad player is a bad player. Period.

Gudbranson, through every single way you want to look at it, is a terrible player. Similar to Jack Johnson, Gudbranson makes everyone around him terrible. Erik Gudbranson LEADS the LEAGUE with a -27. One could argue that the Canucks are a garbage team, as they are 20th in GAA, but consider that Gudbranson's -27 leads a common defensive pairing mate Ben Hutton, second on this list, by 11 goals against, as Hutton is only a -16. In another thread, I explained how Jack Johnson makes everyone around him worse and that only three players on the team (barely) performed better with Johnson on the ice...well...



Woo, dog. It's pretty much the equivalent of the "Jack Johnson Effect".

Hutton was considered by many to be a shit defender by this point. It wasn't until he was removed from Gudbranson that he became a reliable second pairing guy again. When not playing with Gudbranson, he's a + player, getting 25+ minutes a night. Woof.

The craziest aspect of this entire thing is that the other defensemen minus these two are actually at EVEN or + players.

Stecher is +14
Del Zotto, before being traded, was +3
Edler is +3
Biega is +2
Tanev is +1

Even Derrick freakin' Pouliot is at Even in 56 games.

It's pretty easy to see just where the problem was on the Canucks roster. It's a carbon copy of what's happening with Jack Johnson in Pittsburgh.

For as bad as one may feel the Canucks defense is, consider the Penguins actually rank 21st in goals against this year. They just added the worst defensive player in the league to that!
Dumo +27
Letang +10
Pettersson +9
Maatta +7
Schultz +2
Johnson -6

As I said, I won't go into the advanced metrics too much. I've watched plenty of this shitty player in Florida and Vancouver.
Who is Gudbranson on the ice?
Well, like people have said, he's not fast, but he's not necessarily a plodder, but here are three specific things he's not great at:
a) He has trouble getting the puck out of the D zone, especially when it's down low.
b) He has trouble getting off a first pass
c) He doesn't work through the neutral zone

Guess what the Penguins have had issues with this season?
a) Trouble getting the puck out of the D zone
b) Trouble getting off a first pass
c) Lack of resistance in the neutral zone/@ the blueline.

Evgeni Malkin is going to be a minus player for the first time in half a decade because he has Jack Johnson as his prominent pairing. Guess what boys? We just added another Jack Johnson!
Basically, by being happy that Erik Gudbranson is on the team, you're pretty much saying you like the Penguins to have goals scored against them. It's insane.
Again, not using fancy stats here, but you know who statisticians also said was a terrible player based on fancy stats? Jack Johnson.

This atrocious deal was made with a complete lack of understanding of the issues on the Penguins.

3) This is nowhere near the Justin Schultz situation

As Donnie said, Schultz had some advanced numbers to support the fact that he maybe would do well with a change of scenario, but we won't get into that. Strictly from a cost-benefit analysis, these two things don't compare.

Here are some basic differences between Schultz and Gudbranson

Gudbranson
-Average skater
-Can't make the first pass
-Zero agility
-Can't carry the puck
-Very low defensive hockey IQ. Doesn't know how to play systems
-More prone to ice the puck than make a play
-Doesn't use his body well along the boards, despite being 6-4
-Signed to term at a $4 million contract


Schultz
-The complete opposite of the above

For a mid-round pick, it was a no-brainer trade, especially as a reclamation project. Schultz was a pending RFA, and FIT WHAT THE PENGUINS WERE TRYING TO DO WITH THEIR TRANSITION GAME PERFECTLY.

I could support or at least understand such a risk because it was done for the sake of identifying players that fit the team's identity. Even a guy like Hunwick, a poor player albeit, had skills that translated to potentially having success with the Penguins.

If everyone recalls, Schultz didn't even play for the Penguins after being traded. He was given time to digest how the system was run and to gain his confidence with his new team. If I recall, all he did was practice with the team the first 10 days he was on it. He was re-signed on a cheap 1 yr, 1.4 million$ contract as an RFA. The team had the luxury to take him on and do that. Not such the case with Gudbranson.

Absolutely none of that matches Gudbranson. He's been terrible everywhere he goes. He doesn't fit what the Penguins do. And the worst yet, he's on an absolutely albatross of a contract considering how dire and how little flexibility the Penguins have on the cap. Now, with Letang and Dumo possibly being out, he's going to be thrust into the lineup.

For the record, I did check the reaction to the Schultz trade. Honestly, there wasn't much there to say "gotcha."

Schultz is a minus 78 in his last 3 years. Great blue line acquisition for a team already giving up more opportunities than they should. We need a big man willing to pound the hell out of anyone that gets in front of the net. We traded our only big guy last year.

Someone advocates for someone like Gudbranson instead

From what Ive read about Shultz, and from what Oilers fans have said, he could benefit from a change just like Daly did here, he's still young and has room to improve. It'll be boom or bust most likely, but for a 3rd its not horrible, while Lovejoy is out he'll be 6/7 then we'll see what they do once the playoffs start.

Optimistic post

Yea not really happy w/ a 3rd round pick given up. Plus if they really liked Schultz from the beginning then I would have liked to have seen this move happen sooner vs later. What can you expect to see from a guy 20 games in, especially one with supposed confidence issues? He's got a 20 game tryout to see if the Pens want to qualify him, I just don't think that's enough time. If he had another year on his deal I'd be singing a different tune.

Questioning the logistics of the move, but goes as far as to say he'd prefer Schultz on the team over Cole in later posts.

The Schultz deal could work out, I'm just pissed that we couldnt move Kunitz, he's killing Sids line, our only hope is that BB can stay healthy once he's back and the lines get shuffled and Kunitz gets shuffled out

And so on...

Hell, the super genius of this board himself even gave Jack Johnson some hope. If anything, I tried to look on the brightside with him way too much. Gudbranson won't get that respect from me...not even for one game. Fuck this team.

4) Jim Rutherford has closed the window.

You all pretty much called me a Chicken Little when Rutherford made the Ryan Reaves trade. It was a sign to me that he was out to lunch when it came to personnel judgement and realizing what made his team unique and successful. By no coincidence, these shit moves started to happen around the time Botterill moved on to Buffalo.

The window is closed. I doubt the team even makes the playoffs this year. The worst part of all of this? It will no longer be fun to watch a Penguins game anymore, and I honestly don't know how many years it will take for it to be fun again. These two players on defense alone will ruin everything. Yes, they're THAT bad.

For years, Shero would put in retreads, never-was players, usually on premium contracts into the bottom 6, thinking they'd make a difference. It wasn't until the youth movement in 15-16 that Pittsburgh finally realized it could win with rookie deal players who worked well together and were strong in 1-2 specific areas. Reaves was the start of a move back to Shero level of thinking. Sheahan was another addition to that. It's a vicious cycle. You need AHL guys who want to win to come up. You don't trust those AHL guys. Draft picks get traded for these crappy vets. They block the AHL guys and prevent more from being drafted. If disaster strikes, you have to lean on your late round/undrafted scrubs like Carter Rowney instead of hot prospect Y, who was the result of the high-round draft position you traded for a player like Ryan Reaves. Nothing good happens. The end.

I think it was Mr. Craig Adams himself, the innovator of worn-out welcomes and bottom six black holes, who said a bottom 6 should be rotated out every 2 years or so to keep it fresh. This past offseason was when guys like Carl Hagelin needed to be sent packing for picks or the help at center the team so desperately needed. Hagelin was a prime candidate for this as he provided not much to the cup run and was mostly injured, had an albatross of a contract for a cap team, and had a suitable stopgap who could produce similarly in Josh Archibald. Instead, the Penguins kept Hagelin, lost both of their bottom 6 centers, and he's contributed 1 even strength point and mostly has been the invisible man. He's starting more in the defensive zone and his possession numbers have dropped off because of it.

BUT 'MEMBER WHEN RYAN REAVES PUT THE STEELERS HELMET ON!?!?!?!? NEAT! Fleury's smile. Yinzers.

When you replace Cullen and Bonino with McKegg and Ryan fuckin Sheahan, life sucks. Sidney Crosby is burned out. The last thing he needs to do is take a defensive zone draw. So you want McKegg and Ryan fuckin Sheahan to take them instead of Nick Bonino and Matt Cullen. What matchups are teams playing against Pittsburgh? First and second line. The Penguins can't force matchup disadvantages with a 4th line that's combined to score less than Matt Cullen alone all of last season. You combine that with the defensive albatross of S-C-G, and you have games where you have 10 goals and 7 goals against. SCG wasn't even scoring at the pace they were before, which compounds the issues.

I can't help but wonder what money Reaves and Sheahan will be burning in the pockets of JR's future plans, especially when I HOPE he tries to fix this fucking mess at the trade deadline. Do ya'll have confidence in a bottom six that has combined for a total of 23 even strength points in 143 combined games? What are vanilla Riley Sheahan and shit brick Ryan Reaves contributing to this? Hagelin? Rowney? Kuhnackl?

This team is dead in the water because it just doesn't care. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's early. Letang is finding his legs. He sucks donkey dick right now. Maybe they're saving themselves for the playoffs? I've never seen a team just absolutely bleed goals like this one does. It's disgusting. The league is catching up to the Penguins with their young, speedy rookies. Boston's young guys were on display yesterday. Scoring is up in the league because of this, and I imagine the reduction in goalie pads has had a net positive. Pittsburgh's response was to get slower and have less talent in the bottom 6.

The same could be applied to defense. Here we are. The Penguins have a bloated, disgusting defense full of signed free agents or traded for antiquated players on terrible contracts that are hindering the roster. They refuse to play their young players. They're hemorrhaging picks instead of trying to fill holes internally.

Everything I said is becoming true. Everything.

Never did I ever imagine that Jim Rutherford would not only sign a player like Jack Johnson to the contract he did, but then go on an purposefully trade for a player that is worse.

[Hacksaw Jim Duggan]

Vancouver won their first game without Gudbranson, 4-0. Shutout. I honestly would not be surprised if they compete for the second wild card simply because Gudbranson isn't on the roster.
https://i.imgur.com/p3Ql6Sk.gifv

Enjoy this.

[Donnie Brasco]

Good post hack

Jr has now completely dismantled the back to back Stanley cup Champs. Well done!

[Donnie Brasco]

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Jesse Marshall
✔
@jmarshfof
Jack Johnson has been better this season from a defensive standpoint than Gudbranson has.

99
3:50 PM - Feb 25, 2019

[Orangesteel]

Deadspin had a good article about how TB didn’t make any moves because their team is off the charts right now. Lead the league on the PP and PK and have 9 different double digit goal scorers. Yowza.

But, a number of really good teams made some moves to get better at the deadline; Sharks, Preds, Blue Jackets. Caps are already really good and so are the Islanders.

I don’t know enough about Gudbranson to add to this conversation, but I know what -27 means (that’s a lot of skating back to the center dot with your head down because the other team just scored) and I just hope that Dumo and Tanger are not out for a chunk of time or we are fucked.

We don’t have the goaltending, the defense or the consistent offense to make up for those losses.

I’m at the point where I just really want them to make the playoffs; I don’t expect them to go far but I really will be pissed if I don’t get to watch playoff penguin hockey this year.

[COR-TEN]

You may only have 900+ comments, but you make up for it in the number of words.



Good stuff.

[Donnie Brasco]

Deadspin had a good article about how TB didn’t make any moves because their team is off the charts right now. Lead the league on the PP and PK and have 9 different double digit goal scorers. Yowza.

But, a number of really good teams made some moves to get better at the deadline; Sharks, Preds, Blue Jackets. Caps are already really good and so are the Islanders.

I don’t know enough about Gudbranson to add to this conversation, but I know what -27 means (that’s a lot of skating back to the center dot with your head down because the other team just scored) and I just hope that Dumo and Tanger are not out for a chunk of time or we are fucked.

We don’t have the goaltending, the defense or the consistent offense to make up for those losses.

I’m at the point where I just really want them to make the playoffs; I don’t expect them to go far but I really will be pissed if I don’t get to watch playoff penguin hockey this year.

Even though it supports my case Grub (and JJ) is a terrible player, plus/minus isn't a reliable stat to accurately guage someone's effectiveness. Just like Corsi by itself doesn't lend a good analysis. Nor does the "eye test"

But every metric you can think of: high danger chances for/against, shot differential, plus/minus AND THE EYE TEST all conclude that these 2 schmucks are just plain awful players. Even TB has guys that aren't that great. The difference is their bad players are making minimum salary on shorter deals. These 2 morons are eating up $7M of the cap...I mean you just can't have that stuff in the salary cap world.

Just a horrific move by JR. I'm now convinced that the smooth trades that were made a few years ago were all Botterill's doing.

[Pabst]

Speaking of Yowza....Columbus has traded away 8 of their next 10 draft picks (and a 2nd rounder in 2021) plus their 2 top prospects. Talk about going all in

[Donnie Brasco]

Speaking of Yowza....Columbus has traded away 8 of their next 10 draft picks (and a 2nd rounder in 2021) plus their 2 top prospects. Talk about going all in

I applaud Cbus...I mean Bob and Panarin are gone after this year so just assemble the best talented team you can right now and go for it. If you miss then big whoop.

[Louis Lipps Service]

Deadspin had a good article about how TB didn’t make any moves because their team is off the charts right now. Lead the league on the PP and PK and have 9 different double digit goal scorers. Yowza.

But, a number of really good teams made some moves to get better at the deadline; Sharks, Preds, Blue Jackets. Caps are already really good and so are the Islanders.

I don’t know enough about Gudbranson to add to this conversation, but I know what -27 means (that’s a lot of skating back to the center dot with your head down because the other team just scored) and I just hope that Dumo and Tanger are not out for a chunk of time or we are fucked.

We don’t have the goaltending, the defense or the consistent offense to make up for those losses.

I’m at the point where I just really want them to make the playoffs; I don’t expect them to go far but I really will be pissed if I don’t get to watch playoff penguin hockey this year.

Even though it supports my case Grub (and JJ) is a terrible player, plus/minus isn't a reliable stat to accurately guage someone's effectiveness. Just like Corsi by itself doesn't lend a good analysis. Nor does the "eye test"

But every metric you can think of: high danger chances for/against, shot differential, plus/minus AND THE EYE TEST all conclude that these 2 schmucks are just plain awful players. Even TB has guys that aren't that great. The difference is their bad players are making minimum salary on shorter deals. These 2 morons are eating up $7M of the cap...I mean you just can't have that stuff in the salary cap world.

Just a horrific move by JR. I'm now convinced that the smooth trades that were made a few years ago were all Botterill's doing.

Yeah, agreed it's a terrible stat.

But when you compare that stat to every other player on the team and it's 59% worse than the next worst person on the team, that's usually a pretty big red flag.

Then when it's backed up by every other stat, that red flag gets even bigger.

Then when that's backed up by the Vancouver fans, and just about every analyst out there, well....I'm not too optimistic.

[Orangesteel]

^ I agree LLS. Plus/minus in a vacuum is whatever. But -27 is almost an outlier number.

Tonight will be telling. The “new look” CBJ vs the Pens with a skeleton crew on defense. If we beat CBJ tonight their fans are going to be furious. I hope to see Torts lose his fucking mind on the bench.

[Ice]

I can only hope, because in a vacuum, I wouldn't have thought getting rid of Tanner Pearson and J.S. Dea would leave me this depressed.

[FC]

Grubs look at what you have done

Canucks fans are ready to slit there wrists
LGP lost not one...Not two...But three Authors/Writers/Mods from there site
6 games +5 19:30 minutes a game
The most important stat. 6 games played....9 out of 12 possible points(4-1-1) against 5 current playoff teams

[Louis Lipps Service]

Grubs look at what you have done

Canucks fans are ready to slit there wrists
LGP lost not one...Not two...But three Authors/Writers/Mods from there site
6 games +5 19:30 minutes a game
The most important stat. 6 games played....9 out of 12 possible points(4-1-1) against 5 current playoff teams

I'm more than happy to give him credit. He's played much than I expected, given anything I read about him.

Hope it continues.