Bret Botfeld breaks down a busy offseason from the Blueshirts as one MAJOR question mark still lingers for Chris Drury, Mike Sullivan, and the rest of his staff.
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29 Comments
Yup could def still use some more scoring punch
Amazing. after 5 seasons, we still cannot get Laf on his natural left wing – and then complain because he does not measure up.
They picked no front line players ….. Reddish is Drury's ANSWER 😂😂😂😂 guess Ehlers wasnt good enough…several out there better than Raddish!!!!
Yikes 😬 😳. Those lines 😮 are blah 😑.
As I’ve said, best case scenario is tank the season, get the first round picks, hopefully the lottery first.
Would prefer Mika at center for a few reasons but in the small sample size in a down season for him he was clearly more effective on Miller's wing and of course Miller can play wing too and you have 2 guys who can win faceoffs so there is some logic in keeping hm on wing and see if they can build off that production.
Put Mika on the wing and get him scoring, also have to hope Sullivan can get Lafrenière to be his full potential. If Perreault can step in and start producing I think NY could go far…and this all could happen with a stronger defense. Between the addition of Gavrikov and the increased size and strength, have to hope that settles things down and gets the offense moving forward.
Neither scenario works! Who is putting this together? First scenario Pars will be hurt in a week as he is always hurt. Second scenario don’t work because if Cuylle plays on top six we might as well start tanking and not make anymore moves.
I think we package Othman and some picks and make a call for Voronkov imo
The 2nd option is actually pretty good. But if Mika ends up on RW, i'd like to see a trade (maybe othman or berard involved) for a solid 2C and leave Troch at 3C
I kinda like the 2nd option better
How hard are the Panthers laughing at these lines? Mica should be 3C and keep players in their natural positions!
I think Mika on the wing gives him more opportunity to be offensive not having to worry about the defensive responsibilities of being his lines center. Plus he’s there if J.T. Gets tossed from face offs.
Also, more importantly we need a 2 LD
It’s gonna be another disappointing season
I don’t want to see Lafy at RW again. Put him at his natural LW so he can flourish. They need to get Mika and Panarin out of town. They’re not in any position to win the Stanley Cup so why continue the bullshit with both of those high priced over 30 players? Let’s get a young center to anchor the 2nd line. Put Lafy and Cuylie with JT Miller on the first line. Trochek should be centering the 3rd line. We need a complete shakeup. Other than getting rid of Kreider and adding Gavrikov what the fuck did Drury do?
Yawn
His stats look pretty bad. According to what you showed, he gives the puck away 4x the amount that he takes it from other players. He only scored a handful of goals too. Also got a point every 4 games or so. That's not helping to win the playoffs.
When there are 20 points out of a playoff spot, at trade deadline, panarin is gone, mika will waive, and jt will be pissed off again!
Everyone forgetting about the meeting that all players had and decided not to play upto their potentials. Sully better let them know that they better play from the 1st-3rd period at full throttle or else there will be consequences. The team gave up 1/4 into season last year because Drury threatened and let go of their captain. If you don’t play , you go
Bret stated one of the problems without knowing it. He said Mika needs to play on the top lines because of how much he is paid. That its dumb to play a top dollar player on the bottom six. I agree in principle. But reality is not principle. Your play earns your paycheck. Your paycheck does not earn your playtime. This isn't pee wee hockey where we have to be fair. If my 8-million-dollar player is playing like a 1.5-million-dollar player then he should expect to get the play time equal to his effort. I really hate this mentality that we have to play guys who clearly don't want to play.
the worse signing of the season was to resign Drury…after trade away most of the players , he just got Gavrikov?! he is good but the not the best was avialable and plus 3-4 average players …I only like Morrow…I was saying last 3-4 years and saying now, until Drury is here ,we NEVER win anything …yeah maybe president trophy, maybe second round and thats just cause we have one of the best golie…I understand we do not have enough money but there was so many good players who was under 3-4 mil
KHL is garbage in terrorist countries of Russia and Belarus.
Very long-time NYR fan & I was very optimistic about the younger players improving quickly & then starting to take control of the team. This past season changed that for me. I have been very patient w/ Lafreniere thinking the whole time that he could be a sniper but I'm starting to doubt it. Expected a drop off for the whole Trocheck/Panarin/Laf line (which all had "career" years) & also for the team in general which was the 115 pt. President's trophy winner. Didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. The problems start w/ the draft/talent evaluation which has been horrible. Just look at the last 4/5 1st rd. draft picks & how they did. Not a star in the bunch ( so far ) & 2 maybe 3 ( Chytil ) are out of the NHL atm. Not sure if Othmann is a dud also but this is the maybe now or never last yr. of his ELC. My hope is on life support & I expect that they will have a dog fight like last yr. to make the p/o.
Didn't like the Kreider trade – felt like they should have waited to see if he has a bounce back yr & then if not, trade him for some better value return at or near the trade deadline. I guess the K. Miller trade balanced it out by getting more than expected for him but it also is a risk b/c of the recent & historical NYR draft evaluation "failures" .
One of the areas not being mentioned as a potential problem w/ this revamped D is lack of offensive production other than Fox. K. Miller was their only other "offensive" D producer whose production decreased for 2 yrs straight on top of his D zone struggles. Gavrikov had a career hi of 30 pts for the season so hopefully he adds some. Schneider & Borgen hopefully can add at least 25 each . I looked up FLA D men offensive production & the reg season leader was Ekblad who had 33 pts in 56 games. Next highest was Forsling 31 in 80 gms. In the p/o, Ekblad led again w/ 13 pts in 19 gms. w/ N. Schmidt ( a rental ) had 12 in 23. So since FLA is now the standard which the NYR are measuring against , it's not critical that they have massive D man offense but IF Fox goes down or has a decline, others on D & all forward need to step up some or that will be a problem. UNLESS the D & goaltending are super stingy …
My "guess" for this season is a 90+ pt season which is hopefully enough to make it in the p/o at least as a w/c. If they don't make the p/o, I also hope Dolan sees that Drury is not cut out for the job & has the sense to find a better option. Right now, I am beginning to doubt Drury has a sound strategic plan considering ALL the moves made & how he executed them. Just out of simple probability, it is likely that half at best of the major moves made will turn out very well for the team. Talking about the Kreider & K Miller trades mainly . At least one of them will have a bounce back yr & hopefully neither when they play against the Rangers.
We need Laf-miller-Mika and bread-trochek-Cuylle for our top 6. That’s the lines that will bring us to the promised land. Laf will have 60 apples on that top line and jt won’t let him play the lazy style of hockey that we see when his numbers have dropped in the past.
Bald Panarin is sort of disgusting. Eff that guy.
Mika belongs on the wing with miller thats where he was at his best but if you need him to play center you have that option too