dekedangle_rpfanon | #23 — Brown Goes Down

#23 — Brown Goes Down

This is the twenty-third post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Yeah, Holtby's splits are meh enough for me to want to sit back a few years and watch him regress like Quick did post-2012. It's a pattern for goalies!!! It's just how life goes. Price didn't see a sudden spike in sv% from year to year and I wish more people would realize that spikes like those are an abnormality and not an indicator of long-term success.

Of course, I am more than a little bit miffed that Schneider didn't get nominated for the Vezina, so I am perhaps not the best person to discuss this. The winner should absolutely be Bishop, though, and to be perfectly honest, Erik Karlsson should be the one nominated for this award.

DA I agree that players are going to have anomalous years and peaks and then regress, but I'm not sure what spike you're talking about? Holtby's save % has been in the .920 - .922 range for every season he's been in the NHL except his first (when he only played 14 games, so small sample size, etc) and also a dip in 2013-2014 (which can probably be at least partially attributed to Adam Oates and his terrible coaching). Even when he was in the WHL/AHL/ECHL, he had mostly decent numbers. And with his 2006 - 2007 season in the WHL, the Blades being hot garbage and him being young and still developing were definite contributors to his numbers.

(I'm okay with either Bishop or Holtby getting the Vezina--just not sure if I misread what you were saying.)

No, I'm referencing the spike to about .930-ish in the beginning of the season when everyone was ready to call him "better than Price". I knew he was going to regress back to the .920s region and no one would listen to me.

I still think that Schneider should have been in over Holtby. Quick is an even worse choice, but the alternative is Crawford, so I'm fine with that nomination on a purely personal level. And, by all means, LA's defense was worse than Washington's this year (still can't believe the choice to give Scuderi 20+ minutes instead of calling up their young guys).

Anyway, Holtby was on this insane hot streak at the beginning of the season and then posted sub-.920 numbers. He reminds me most of a less-consistent early Jimmy Howard. Not a bad thing, honestly! He's a great goalie with a good team in front of him who tends to be streaky.

And, by all means, LA's defense was worse than Washington's this year (still can't believe the choice to give Scuderi 20+ minutes instead of calling up their young guys)

What young guys are you thinking of? Forbort and Gravel both got call-ups during the season. Or do you mean strictly in the playoffs? They left them down, because the Reign was also in the playoffs and they didn't want to leave them a tissue paper D.

NA

Kind of off-topic, but are the AHL playoffs that highly valued? If it were me, I'd pull everyone I had to out of the AHL to give my team a better shot in the NHL playoffs, though I suppose that also depends on each team's chances in their respective playoffs race.

na

They're limited on the number of non-emergency call ups they can have while their AHL team is still playing. And it's kind of considered a dick move.

Ah, makes sense. I kind of figured on it being considered a dick move, but that alone probably wouldn't stop most teams, lol.

That's not how it works. It's four call ups post-deadline during the NHL regular season; they can call up whoever they hell they want during during the postseason regardless of whether or not the AHL team is still playing.

It is a dick move, though. Sestito was reportedly pissed that he got called up from the Baby Pens. Mostly because of his blood feud with O'Brien but still. The Baby Pens were pretty much pillaged during the regular season and their best defenseman is being held hostage in Pittsburgh, you don't want to decimate them any more.

Sestito was reportedly pissed that he got called up from the Baby Pens.

He wasn't reportedly "pissed," he said he had never been that happy before to be sent back down (and why wouldn't he be, he knew he wasn't going to get to play with the Pens, and WBS is the team he feels invested in). Calling up a player like Sestito is hardly decimating a team, and the eternally-injured Pens have had no problem decimating WBS in past seasons and postseasons. It can piss off fans who care equally or more about the minor league team, but it's a normal thing.

Sestito's stat line from last night was the most Sestito thing ever.

1 goal (game tying it should be noted) 1 elbowing minor, 1 fighting major, 2 misconducts, 2 game misconducts. 47 PIMs

He got a misconduct while celebrating his goal and doing the Max Talbot shush at the Hershey bench, then somehow got another misconduct in the hallway serving his first misconduct.

ayrt

And I was legitimately surprised to learn you can get more than one misconduct in the same game.

NA

Did you know one guy once got four misconducts in the same game, three of them at the exact same time?

http://onthisdayinsports.blogspot.com/2013/03/march-11-1979-randy-holt-of-la-kings-is.html

I was curious as to who was the record-holder for most PIMs in one game, and it turns out Sestito didn't even get close.

Who is the hostage in Pittsburgh? This sounds like an exciting AU.

I assume they're talking about Pouliot, who has been up for a while but barely playing.

Pouliot.

Then, going back to the original point, why wouldn't the Kings gut the Reign if they're both in the playoffs but the Reign has some assets that could help the Kings out? Assuming the defense problem originally attributed to the Kings is correct, that is. /not a Kings fan, just curious

DA

To be honest, even if they'd been called up, I'm not sure they would have been a better choice than Scuderi or that Sutter would have made that choice. Scuderi is not as bad on the Kings as he was on the Penguins.

Sutter tried every combination possible all year long to find a group of six that would not be hot garbage and could play in the system. He didn't get that until March. Scuderi is slow, but he understands the system (which was, among other things that I have only vague speculation about, Erhoff's problem — he could not remember where he was supposed to be or what he was supposed to be doing). Doughty is a strong enough partner that he can cover just about anyone he partners with, but he can't play all the shifts — especially when on the penalty kill, which is where the Sharks killed the KIngs in the playoff. And what really hurt the Kings there was not having Martinez. Martinez has become a very reliable penalty killer this year. Without him, there was basically no second shift on the penalty kill.

As for the young guys, I don't see what the Kings see in Forbort. If I were GM, I would have traded him. He might still have a high upside, but he's definitely not there yet. I don't think Sutter sees it either. Gravel looked better in his call-up, but this is his first year playing pro. He needs more seasoning, and he might be a good choice to get some playoff minutes down the line, but I don't think he would have been put on the penalty kill.

/anon who said the thing about the young guys in the first place

Their top 6 had McBain, McNabb, Scuderi, and Schenn. You can get away with maybe using two of those players in the playoffs, in a bottom pair role, but not when the other team has Paul Martin, Brent Burns, and Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Those are three top pairing d-men right there, while the Kings had Doughty and a shaky Jake Muzzin. You could see it in the way Quick played: utter distrust in about 4 of his defensemen. The defense for LA this year was Quick and Doughty, and Quick looked... meh at best. (Side note: can someone please tell that man to never play the puck? He's SO BAD at it. Just stay in your crease, Jonathan! Your positioning is questionable enough without you leaving the net.)

Doughty himself really was not that good in the Sharks series. Maybe it was a combination of everything breaking down at once, but he recorded 1 assist and despite possessing the hell of the puck, got burned more than a few times.

I fail to see how Gravel/Forbort as a bottom pair could have been worse than what they were rolling, which was Scuderi/McBain. Speed is such a crucial part of the game, and Scuderi just doesn't have that anymore. When the shot-blocking, heavy minute absorbers break down in old age, it's fast and awful. Think Dan Girardi.

Personally, I think Gravel should have played more in the regular season and Forbort should be used as sweetening a package with Dustin Brown in it; if not, neither of those guys is worse than McBain or Scuderi.

Also not helping the Kings: their top six all but disappeared. It was bizarre.

AYRT

I was specifically addressing why not bring up Forbort and Gravel for Scuderi, not all the reasons the Kings lost the playoffs. I agree that the top six didn't score (but that's been a problem for awhile) and that Quick had a terrible stretch of games. I could also bring up that Jeff Carter can't win face-offs, so I don't understand why they keep letting him take them.

I also don't disagree that McBain/McNabb/Scuderi/Schenn should be part of a bottom pairing. But so should Gravel and Forbort right now, and from what we saw of them in their call-ups, there was little reason to think that they'd be a better bottom two. At most optimistic, it would have been a wash, and Darryl Sutter's not likely to play younger people he's less familiar with, so they wouldn't have been soaking up many minutes anyway.

I agree that Gravel should have played more in the regular season, but he didn't. To be fair to the team, it makes sense they tried different combinations of partnerships and placings to make the D they have work before calling up a kid from the AHL to play both for cap reasons and for Gravel's development.

Erhoff's struggles with the Kings made me sad to begin with, but even more so now that he's doing really well for my national team, which is obviously far from great, but still.

They played so well today, I was so proud. :')

Re: NHL Awards - Ted Lindsay

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Re: NHL Awards - Ted Lindsay

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Re: NHL Awards - Ted Lindsay

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AYRT

They made me sad, too. He's had one of those careers where it feels unfair that he never got to win a cup.

I'm a Pens fan, but I find Sestito terrifying and am weirdly fond of O'Brien, so this blood feud amuses me to no end. There was Twitter trashtalk back and forth, even! And I am Team O'Brien all the way on this one.

You want the prospects to get playing time and if they're even not ready to crack the line up, AHL playoffs experience is still valuable.

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