They need a TOP 6 RIGHT WINGER

not a BOTTOM 6 LW/C (who can maybe play rw also but nobody has actually said that)

Like are you trying to play dumb or do you really not understand?

to answer bruins need quality scoring 2nd line winger... whether kase fills that or bjork/senyshyn fills that maybe studnicka comes in at 2rw or 3c and coyle moves up to 2rw. That is a different story but i dont think after that kase trade we are looking outside the organization to fill that role. now 2 years from now who knows if kase re-signs, or how players develop next year. theres alot of different scenarios here that can work out. I am almost positive they wouldnt be looking at acquiring sammy blais but i understand the thought process on the fit.

he plays RW right now(given he's LH), as again this very site tells you (not sure why NHL.com has his as a LW? Maybe because he played to the left of ROR a decent amount last year? that was only because of Perron's preference and great value. Maybe hadnedness) and why are you still calling him a center even if it's "LW/C"? He was never a center in the NHL, he is not listed as a center on NHL.com or this site or eliteprospects (who has him as LW/RW) or hockey reference where is this coming from?

Also "top 6 winger" only matters if you have that money, you think &M + the cap raise, less the raises the 14 other free agents get (so probably something around 4 M) gets you a "top 6" winger because you specified top 6?
Also what happens if Kuraly walks and Wagner moves to center, you got a bottom 6 wing opening then, huh?
Also more importantly, I raise again why are you ****ting all over a Blues post with furious animosity over Boston being the arbitrary team picked for a reasonable trade than any team would want even after I've specified that any team fits, multiple times, and this is focused on the Blues season more than Bostons, and you've already brow beat me over not knowing the secret any team handshake?

point is again, I DO NOT CARE, send him to Edmonton or whatever, who cares, calm down and go away. You are contributing nothing to this post. I did not make this post with the explicit intention of dumping in your Cheerios and you are furiously and immovably convinced that I have and it's getting in the way of useful discussion

ok this is responding to two people so please be patient with the "I didn't say that, that was [the other person I QTd here]"

Anyway, yeah I get that but I come from a baseball background looking at analytics (and form what I read on hockeygraphs they look to Tango et all) and transferring lessons from there it's best IMO to use an all encompassing stat as a shorthand most of the time, but if you remotely have the time at all look at the breakdown of that stat and put that ahead, like way way ahead, of the all encompassing stat, unless you are getting to like career levels of big enough sample.
For example looking at baseball and WAR lets say for hitters, a guy has a 7 WAR season, maybe because his UZR, which takes about 3600 innings or nearly 3 years to become a useful sample, is crazy high. Is that real? what if we adjust his defense for a 3 year rolling average by adding the UZR for the year before and year after (or 2 years before if you have no future data yet) and divide it by 3 then look at the WAR? but nobody does that& the player did in fact create those outs even if they are not indicative of that players talent going forward. What about a player whose hitting, their wRC+, jumped up? Was it a flukey BABIP? are they a high BABIP guy? was it more ISO? was that ISO more BABIP because stuff was landing in gaps instead of gloves, was it an elevated HR/FB%? Will that go down? or maybe it was an elevated HR/FB% but their LD% spiked up because they are hitting the snot out of the ball? Maybe their LD% was down but their HR/FB% are both up because they are hitting the ball hard and LDs are being misclassified as FB? Maybe it was just a few flukey FBs down the line? If you just look at WAR you don't see any of these things

additionally in baseball there is a lot of easy filtering of results from individual battles, hockey there is a lot of moving parts so we need to loot at globs of data and adjust for our controls, but even our controls (like a player changing teams ) have a lot of unquantifiable variables (worse linemates, coaching schemes that are good but don't fit the player, coaching schemes that are bad, coaching schemes that are good and make a player look better than before etc.). We've drawn some good conclusions (primary points are indicative of scoring prowess but secondary assists are mostly noise, 5v5 better shows a players prowess unless we are looking at goalies in which case we should be looking at all shots faces with 5 defenders in front - i.e. include PK, etc.) but we don't know say how to quantify primary points vs possession for total value
Also some attempts at adjusting this stuff away (level of competition,,etc) can actually add back in SSS noise instead of alleviate it. I don't see any specific weight calculations in GAR, I see that they encpass loosely defined things like EVO & EVD which sound right but I have no idea how much pull say primary assists or shot location vs shot volume factor in - or more importantly why what weight was used, maybe I haven't found the magic link with the formula. I love how available the individual stats (like xGF/60 for example) are and how well they explain stuff in general but I haven't seen taht last link adn I wonder if I will agree with it.
This is probably why I think I value Sanford far more and Blais far less looking over Corsi% (which tbf should probably be Fenwick because how valuable are blocked shots to telling us possession but then again I'm weighing that in tandem with...)xG%, primary points, and realize that guys sustaining it over 80 games is going to be a bit more valuable than a guy who has done it for 40 that we've extrapolated. IN that sense, sure Blais's possession is fine, but Sanford's is a bit better 5v5 from what I see, he's sustained it for longer, and he has more scoring to go with it. That's also why I think Barbie with noticeably worse possession stats than Blais last year but better possession stats over his career and last year was a bit of a down year, who also scores more and plays center, is more valuable.

All in all we are asking which cheap 4th line/throw to the left of O'Reilly guy is better or more worth keeping in the 1.5-3M range 2 years from now and my answer like both you, start with "hopefully all of them" but then moves on to a radically different Sanford (who I think of as more of a middle 6 guy) > Barbashev > Blais and in this exercise of trying to realistically manage a roster & keep Pietrangelo (who moves the needle in a way I think we all agree on) and with Seattle taking Perron (because IMO that's the realistic take as ideal as them taking Faulk would be), I ran up against the cap, over by <600k and had to get rid of 1 of them to stay under the min.
Just team fit alone I think having another 4C behind Sundqvist in the event he goes down, let alone if he moves up so Thomas or Schenn can play wing, as well as having the better player and fit playing to teh left of O'Reilly if Thomas doesn't move up or Schwartz does walk or again someone gets hurt, all means more than Blais, and he's 3rd on my list so he went. that's all.

EVO and EVD are critical to Evolving-Hockey's calculations. Evolving-Hockey are a brand of "macrostats" in the hockey community, which focuses very heavily on shot rates and quality. If someone like O'Reilly- who has very few goals (relatively) but a gajillion assists this season- is consistently generating offense due to how he assists on goals, then you see on that GAR chart for the Blues this season his EVO is second only to Pietrangelo. But the people who have scored a bunch with O'Reilly this season- like David Perron, who leads the team in scoring- that isn't reflected in their EVO. So, GAR (and to a lesser extent WAR) definitely takes that kind of stuff into account.

So, you do hit on the criticism of GAR and WAR that it distills everything out too much that you lose important stuff, or it actually adds in more noise than it takes out. So, to really test their model, that's when you have to look at who their model says is good. Their model says that Alex Pietrangelo was the best player on the Blues this year. I don't think there's really any argument there. Their GAR leaders are all pretty much who we consider the best players in the league, with the notable exception of Draisaitl. So, maybe things are lost and maybe they aren't, but if they are, I think the impact that it has is relatively negligible if they still come up with the right answers for the "who is good?" question.

To the Seattle thing- I don't know if they will take either Perron or Faulk. Both are pretty much universally panned by the analytics community and Seattle's hires have been all well touted analytics people other than Francis.

If our protected list is 7F: O'Reilly/Tarasenko/Schenn/Thomas/Kyrou/Sundqvist/Schwartz (assuming a Schwartz extension) 3D: Dunn/Pietrangelo/Parayko and Binnington then they 100% take Sanford in that scenario, especially if he scores 10+ goals again.

If it has to be one of Sanford/Blais/Barbashev, all I'm saying is it should be Barbashev. His role as a PK expert is overstated, he has the most limited upside, and he will be more expensive than Blais. You can stick Blais in the same role as Barbashev is occupying now if you need to. If Sundqvist goes down, you have DLR, a center and PK guy, on the bench who also has a better on ice impact than Barbashev, even though he doesn't personally score as much.

If I'm making my "ideal" lines for the semi-near future this is what it is:

Schenn-O'Reilly-Tarasenko
Schwartz/Sanford/Blais/2LW - Thomas- Kyrou
Sanford/Blais - 3C - Kostin/Blais
MacEachern-Barbashev-Sundqvist
DLR/Walker/Poganski idk whoever is best and makes sense

Dunn - Pietrangelo
Mikkola/Perunovich - Parayko
Mikkola/Perunovich - 3RHD (pro tip: sign Jan Rutta!)
Bortuzzo

Binnington/Husso

And I would lean towards not re-signing Schwartz because we can't afford it. A 3C will be much cheaper than paying Schwartz Schenn-esque money. Obviously it all depends on Sanford and Blais' development next year (Sanford's GAR this year was just a shade under Schwartz's, sooooo). I guess if we move Faulk and Scandella eventually then it doesn't matter, but both of those players are bad so I wouldn't hold my breath.

I disagree on the Schwartz part, simply because I think the Blues can afford it, but also you can look at value all day but at some point value has to be to make room for good, nobody wins an all value championship. The dirty littel secret to moneyball is the As team is was written about also had Miguel Tejada and Tim Hudson and Barry Zito and people just tend to forget that. That said I don't think we actually disagree on Schwartz, we agree Schwartz would be good but expensive, I just don't see him going for 6-6.5M as being prohibitive or something the Blues can't afford. As you see above I fit the high end of that into the budget with realistic contracts, if Faulk leaves (again I would like but unlikely) or he goes for 6m we keep everyone, or hell if you feel strongly on Barbie & let him walk you can keep Schwartz. If you can think of a 3C that can be signed for 2M or less who is better than Barbie there is another no brainier move

Also I'm glad to hear that about their GAR calculation & glad to hear that the limitations are echoed by others, also glad to hear the effect isn't pronounced. I would still look at the sum of all parts against parts whenever possible, again in baseball the best players are who you expect when looking at WAR charts but things like Hr/FB and BABIP & SSS UZR all need to be factored in. I really also would like to know what is under that hood and more importantly how the weights are arrived at, but from the sound of it, it's a good stat, which is awesome!

Really interested in the idea that Seattle plucks Sanford (or Blais for that matter if they like him as much as some but probably Sanford). if that happens the Blues take a pretty solid value dint at wing which isn't fun but already frees up the cash from Blais, probably moves Thomas up to the top 6 for sure if Kyrou doesn't go instead, and makes Perron suddenly an asset that we are picking between shipping him out and waking Schwartz walk. In that case I assume he's dealt for a small return (or maybe we do up and move Faulk) the Blues look for a high value low cost forward outside of the org if Kostin doesn't ever turn into an NHLer

If the cap kept going up I would have less of a problem re-signing Schwartz. I just think it's more important to have that money available to commit to our younger players like Thomas, Kyrou, Dunn, and (less young but has a contract extension upcoming) Parayko. We've already committed big big extensions to Schenn, Faulk, and hopefully Pietrangelo, signing another 6-8 contract really starts to reduce some flexibility. Again, the best solution would be to shed Faulk. If we do that, somehow, and use his money to re-sign Schwartz I probably am fine with it.

I mean yeah, you have to look at the breakdown as much as possible. A guy like Parayko has a really good GAR, but he's not the guy you want playing a bunch in the offensive zone at even strength, because his EVO isn't all that great while is EVD is incredible (so, save him for d-zone starts). The point of GAR is just to get a baseline- is this guy providing positive value?- and then if it's not the kind of value you want (ie, you need to score more and you have a guy that is only providing defensive value), you can still explore moving them for a more complementary piece, even if that piece has a worse GAR.

I just don't see who else they would want that's exposed. One year of Perron, again, not an analytical darling, at 34? Six years of Faulk, also not an analytical darling and making a lot of money? They might take a run at Husso if he gets enough NHL reps next year and they can't find a good goalie, but I tend to think they'll go with a younger, restricted player with scoring upside. But my fingers are crossed that its Faulk, even if it costs us something else. They should probably take Perron for the meme tbh