Curt

Kirby Dach scouting report from Ben Kerr of Last Word on Hockey Prospects.com https://lastwordonhockeyprospects.com/2019/04/05/kirby-dach-scouting-report/

I think 3 years is a good conservative estimate for a prospect of that caliber to be a top 6 level contributor. D+1 year in college/juniors, D+2 year breaking into the NHL with maybe some AHL time, D+3 year (age 21) ready to go.

And of those 7 in the 4-5 year range, some are already on warm seats. Tort, Maurice, even Babcock, they are on playoff teams and the pressure is on them big time to deliver results. It’s a tough business for sure.

Yeah, there are always reasons good why someone takes a job. What like about Buffalo’s current situation is 1) the young pieces of Eichel, Dahlin, Reinhart, etc 2) the incredible cap flexibility going forward allowing the team to be built in a variety of different ways, ideally tailored to this hypothetical incoming coach. That’s got to be attractive. Obviously the situation is not perfect though........

Bingo

These other GMs know the deal though. These hypothetical coaches who lasted 5-7 years in their previous jobs don’t really exist in any large numbers. Only 2 current NHL coaches have been with their current teams for 5 or more seasons. Not to be snarky, but Florida went through coaches just as fast as Buffalo recently, yet just signed Quennville.

I don’t think Dach’s skating is a question mark, but it’s not as good as Turcotte/Zegras/Cozens/Krebs. Boldy also has not great skating, but both are better skaters than Reinhart, for example.

Even at the college level, Tage never really carried the puck or made nice setup passes to teammates, did he? He scored most of his goals off one timers I thought.

Thanks for sharing. I just can’t decide. I love them all!

I actually like the lottery system as it is currently. Dropping the top teams just enough, and introducing enough randomness, that it’s not worth it to tank for a specific player. I like Eichel as much as the next guy, but the whole McDavid/Eichel sweepstakes, trade away anyone with a pulse, lose as many as you can, race to the bottom, was not a good look for the league or Buffalo.

If Cozens and Turcotte are off the board, I think Peyton Krebs could be right there with Zegras and Dach.

So, McLellan will probably sign with a team in the next 24 hrs? Very interesting.

I could almost think this was a legit theory if it was the large media markets or areas were they are trying to grow the game that kept winning the lottery, but that hasn’t been the case, so I don’t see what the evidence could possibly be.

I don’t disagree, but that is also probably the easiest area for a player to improve.

My thinking is, he won’t get pushed around because they can’t catch him. That’s why I don’t worry about size much if the player has elite skating.

To me, it’s top-2 you really need to hope for. 3-10 has almost no consensus about who is better. We could the same player at 6-7-8 as at 3.

I think Kakko is pretty close, but not the others. Hughes has elite skating. He will immediately be among the top 10(or something like that) skaters in the NHL. That counts for a lot. Combine that with great stick handling and great vision, and you get someone who can dominate the play. I believe that he is going to be at least a PPG player in the NHL, with the upside to be even more. As a draft prospect, he is on par with Eichel/Matthews.

Regarding Gronborg, I would also like to add the question: When is the last time he coached in an actual league? It’s been a long while and there is no high level league experience. That’s what concerns me the most. Can he keep a teams ear for more than a couple weeks at a time? Over an 82 game season? Multiple years of 82 game seasons? It’s a lot easier to put up with someone when you know that your time together will be short. More difficult when there is no end in sight.

No word. If you want to get all cynical conspiracy theory-ish, I’ve got one. Theory: Botterill has contacted several candidates about the job, the rest have not become public. McLellan is one of them, but has also been negotiating with LA about possibly taking their job. McLellan’s camp leaked that he was in talks with Buffalo to the media in order to maybe light a fire under LA management to get a more favorable deal from them.

Haha, ok, true enough. Then a first round exit the next year. He got them to back to back conference finals appearances. Truth is, when Buffalo is a playoff team, then I’ll start fretting about whether the coach is “only” going to be able to get them to the conference finals! Right now, that’s not even on my radar. They need someone who is going to help mold this group into a playoff caliber team.

If you want to call not winning a cup underachieving, then sure. His playoff results there were not perfect, but they had a good deal of success and has the team done any better since he left? I consider the fact that he got the Oilers to the 2nd round of the playoffs a major accomplishment. To me, he would be acceptable. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t suck.

Right! No one is going to “get it done” (win a cup?) with a roster like that. I don’t care how good of a coach they are.

I think we all know that teams are more than just a couple players.

What type of innovative concepts does he use that only Swedes can understand?

If he doesn’t want to come here, then it might not matter if you offer $5M instead of $4M.