Quoting: Aebexz
Trade 1 makes no sense for Seattle, terrible trade for them.
Trade 2 is not worth it, he’s worth keeping.
Trade 3 makes the team worse both short term and long term. Risto isn’t what his contract says.
Trade 4 is nice though
Yeah, I get the Risto stuff but here's the thing. The guy is a truly, truly elite talent. He's been held in high esteem by a lot of general managers for a reason, but the analytics community sees his advanced stats playing in a defensive role on bottom feeder teams and interpret them as him being awful defensively, when in reality they're most often the result of him being trusted with those defensive minutes in the first place.
People also use possession stats to suggest Lily is the best defensive D on this team, when it's his lack of defensive usage that is largely the reason for those numbers. Lily's rush defense is decent, but come playoff time when the checking gets tighter and players have to resort to putting the puck in a place where they can win 1 on 1 battles, Lily's strengths become limited as his space does. At the end of the day, there's literally nothing that Liljegren does better than Risto. Risto is faster, he is stronger, he is a better puck carrier, is more physical, better offensively, bigger, and so on. Risto's issue has always been that one defensive gaffe that sticks out. Now, I'm not one of those folks who would just look past those with Jake Gardiner, because poise is crucial and mistakes like that are not acceptable.
They are however something that is coachable, and when Torts came into Philly Risto was again trusted in a shutdown role and was challenged by Torts to improve those warts, playing in a system that would better support him with back pressure from the forwards and structure defensively. He was literally one of the best defensive D in the league by the end of last year dude, this despite playing in a defensive role on a bottom feeder team. Like, top 15 league wide. That's why guys like Lindholm go from being an analytics whipping boy in Anaheim to immediately being a Norris contender after joining a better situation, or why guys like Seth Jones go from being a Norris contender to an analytics whipping boy after being put in a worse situation. Hockey is a team sport and the structure and talent of the team you play on is crucial, especially for guys playing those roles.
He also had 4 seasons in a row with at least 40 points on the Sabres from the ages of 20 to 24 before the Sabres blundered his development like they did with Myers, or as the Leafs did Schenn. He is literally everything you want in a playoff defenseman so long as he can limit those gaffes. Look what partnering with Rielly did for Lyubushkin and Schenn; they basically went from bottom pairing D on basement teams to competent top pair defenders on an elite team, allowing Rielly to take on the puck moving abilities and letting the game to come to them. The difference with Risto is he's way more mobile, a much better puck carrier and can actually make plays and shoot from the backend when teams collapse around the net.
At the very least he'd be a top 4 on this team which is reasonable for that contract, but he has the potential to surpass that if put in the right situation. Until it happens, if it does, people can call me crazy. I just think this would be a shrewd bet that would solidify a piece of our top 4 for the next few years. I did think Lily or Timmins do that, though Timmins is at least a great play maker I'll admit.
Aebexz liked this.
Reply
Knies,
CapFriendly
CapFriendly