Would be a massive W for calgary

Hearing #Flames and Jonathan Huberdeau are putting the finishing touches on an eight-year, $84 million extension. 8 x $10.5 million.@DailyFaceoff

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) August 5, 2022

I almost spat out my water

Oh wow that’s not going to age well

BWAHAHAHA

Jason Spezza is a freaking legend

How new scout Jason Spezza watches games vs. how his veteran counterparts do 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Ll8Q1DSmhb

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) August 4, 2022

Perhaps he's taking notes of things Dubas has asked him to check out.

He's a "special assistant" to GM after all.

Jonathan Huberdeau on his new extension with the Flames: “Brad Trevling told me if I signed this deal he would fulfill my dream and trade me to the masterclass organization Montreal Canadiens. Looks like Trevling is not a man of his word”
Wow, looks like things are getting “heated” between Huberdeau and the flames

In context of Dom's ranking it doesnt matter who plays what line/role/position. Both Drury and Kotkaniemi were on the team last year (unless Dom is using a min GP cutoff to exclude Drury - in which case Drury is likely counted as a 0 wins above replacement player). Trocheck left and they didnt replace him with anyone near the same quality. Youre counting all the upgrades but ignoring this big downgrade

I get your point and I mostly agree - statistically it doesnt account for the same player improving year over year and its likely underrating KK and Drury's impact, but Im just trying to explain what the article is basing its numbers on, for better or for worse

Ah, OK-if I understand correctly, your point was that for purposes of the model Trocheck was replaced by nobody since KK and Drury were already on the team. Fair point, but given the upgrades, I still think the Canes should be higher-at the very least not in the negatives.

First of all, you need to stop thinking that he thinks lol. Everything Dom does is purely based on what his model spits out. The analysis is the only part where he can offer insight on potential flaws and his actual opinion.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the model thought Campbell was bad. He was truly elite for one month, good for one month, mediocre for one month, and ATROCIOUS for three months. He then followed that up with a bad playoffs, and has never been a starter until this year, so there’s no track record to project anything other than him being a typically solid, yet bad when overplayed 1B. Whereas Kuemper has been a high end starter for years and is pretty well established as one of the 10 best goalies in the league.

As far as Detroit goes, it’s simply a collection of building blocks rather than one massive jump. Husso was excellent for a 3 month stretch (pretty much right up until the playoffs), and because his career sample size is smaller, I imagine that gets weighted more heavily than Campbell’s elite November would. Regardless, he’s a huge upgrade on Greiss, who sucked last year. So that’s probably a sizeable jump, but then it’s just quantity. I don’t know the exact projections, but let’s call Greiss, Staal, and whoever else replacement level because that’s probably generous. Copp and Perron are probably both worth 2 wins, Husso over Greiss is probably 2-3 wins, Maatta was solid, he’s probably worth a win, and guys like Kubalik and Pysyk are better depth options (maybe another 0.5-1.5 wins) that help offset Chiarot likely having a negative impact lol

For Ottawa, he said Giroux+DeBrincat+Talbot is 5.8 wins coming in. But C. Brown and Murray went out, and they’re both worth about a win each, which brought Ottawa’s total down to 3.7, and it also liked Del Zotto as a depth piece apparently. So yeah it basically comes down to Ottawa having a similar incoming total value as Detroit (but with 3 guys, rather than 9 or whatever), but losing 2 decent pieces, whereas Detroit only lost scraps. Which is pretty fair.

Finally, this is all based on individual value. The model can’t calculate how these guys will affect the rest of the team. For example, DeBrincat and Giroux might help Stutzle truly break out, and maybe Pinto too (Pinto will also easily be better than White or Tierney imo). Sanderson will likely step in and have a major impact. Playing literally anybody over Zaitsev is a plus, and I don’t think that was accounted for. So that’s some more positive value that the model can’t account for. And I think that’s more sizeable than for Detroit, who you can only really make the argument that maybe Chiarot or Maatta being better than last year’s left side (questionable for Chiarot) improves Seider because he has less dead weight to drag around. The improvements in depth are already accounted for by the individual values of the incoming players, and there’s not much potential to be unlocked up front (Raymond is already on the top line, Zadina is likely to get pushed down the lineup honestly, Vrana-Copp-Perron second line and then Fabbri-Suter-Kubalik 3rd line doesn’t exactly leave him a spot). Their biggest X factors are Seider improving as I mentioned, and maybe Edvinsson cracking the lineup, although I’m not sure why you sign 73 left defensemen if you want Edvinsson to be given a spot lol. So there’s some ripple effects there that might cause Ottawa to be the actual better team (and optimizing value by having 1 superstar is always better than 4 depth players in reality), but Detroit brought in more individual talent as a collective.

W signing by Calgary

Huberdeau is one of the best playmakers in the NHL and as I have said before playmakers get paid big. Worry about the final 3 years later

Now do Weegar

I’m with you, 2-3 years this will be nice but absolutely has the potential to end very poorly

To clarify something: the model DOES project value change over the years, but this is done based on age, track record, and comparables. Position in the lineup doesn’t really matter, especially because we can’t guarantee that right now, so for example it’s not going to project a large spike for KK when he’s been mediocre to date, just because it’s likely that he gets thrust into the 2C role. After all, he might fail there. Also Burns is 37 and declining, whereas DeAngelo is (unfortunately, considering he’s an asshat) really good at hockey and still in his prime. So they basically downgrade from DeAngelo to Burns, upgrade from Nino to Patches (who is also aging though, so his projected value is likely lower than this year), and downgrade from Trocheck/Domi to Kase and a replacement level player. Plus Cole was solid, and Gardiner sucks (or Coghlan is just a replacement level player) so that’s another downgrade. To clarify further: Dom explicitly says in his analysis that the model sees going from DeAngelo to Burns as a downgrade, but he thinks Burns is likely to be just as effective, if not more effective, in Carolina’s system, which I think we can all agree with, unless age very suddenly catches up to Burns, which is also well within reason. So he acknowledged that there’s a potential for a major swing in actual value there, which goes back to what I was saying in my above post about the model being unable to account for how a player impacts his teammates in a new system, because it projects based on age curves and comparables to give an individual number. And for the record, they still do rank very highly league-wide. Mostly because a lot of the rest of the teams in the upper echelon of the East took a step back or stagnated.

I'll say it more accurately: the model is flawed. It doesn't take enough external factors into account (some of which you mentioned, such as a player's [like Debrincat or Giroux] effect on a linemate [like Steutzle or Batherson]), and it can't accurately project unestablished players (such as Beniers, Eklund, Sanderson, etc.). And there are some teams that you can't tell me with a straight face are worse off than they were to start the offseason (such as the Canes) no matter what the model says (and at least he acknowledges this in his article). I'm not accusing Leszczyszykyn (or however the heck you spell it, let's just go with Dom) of being an idiot, I just think the model isn't as accurate as he projects it to be. (Also, as a Lightning fan, Campbell was actually not too bad in the playoffs, at worst he was considerably better then he was in the latter half of the regular season, though of course I understand why the model would put a lot more weight on 3 months than 7 games).

I understand why CGY did it, they want to show they can sign elite players - for 8 years tho he shouldn’t have gotten more than 8.5 mill

I love how CF can be completely dead/silent one minute, then Friedman tweets that the Flames are closing in on an extension with Huberdeau and CF goes bonkers with activity

I mean they are comparing a guy who just went into management to GM's who have been on the job for multiple years.

The guys learning and honestly I feel he will transition into a managerial role well

I don't think they're even making fun of him at all-it's just funny to see the old vets like Hextall and Yzerman sitting there chewing gum while Spezza furiously writes a novel for Dubas

And I do think he'll be a great managerial asset

Of course the model is flawed lol, all models are. If there were no flaws, Dom wouldn’t be writing for the Athletic, he’d be a GM and win the next 12 Stanley Cups. Projecting unestablished players is left to the prospect gurus. Impact on linemates is nearly impossible to quantify, like the only possible way you could do that even remotely accurately is for one guy, and that’s Sidney Crosby, who has had enough mediocre players thrown on his wings over the last 15 years to actually create a decent sample size of his impact on improving others lol. The point of this is that it will give a pretty solid idea of how teams will improve or get worse this year. Some guys will have inexplicable career years, some guys will flop in a new situation. That’s just how hockey goes. But based on comparables for every player and typical aging curves, this ranking gives the baseline for improvement for each team. The main takeaway shouldn’t be “Detroit is 6 wins better? They better get exactly 12 more points next year then” it should be “Detroit brought in a lot of quality depth, they’ll probably do better next year, while Florida lost a LOT of talent, they’re probably no longer the President’s trophy favourites”

That's not exactly what my point was (I.E. I wasn't arguing that there are perfect models, or that if the results are different from what Dom projects then it proves the model is garbage), but I agree with everything you said there.

Craig Button just jelly as Spezza got a scouting job with an NHL org and he doesnt

RIP VGK

Max Pacioretty held nothing back when talking about accountability in Vegas 👀 pic.twitter.com/CvZ6ktDDNx

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) August 4, 2022

Max Pacioretty held nothing back when talking about accountability in Vegas 👀 pic.twitter.com/CvZ6ktDDNx

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) August 4, 2022