Jorcus

Dustin Tokarski starts for Carolina tonight.

According to Daily Face off Levi gets the goal today.

The trouble is there are no proven number 2 centers you can trade for that are much if any better than Cozens is even in his current extended funk. There are about 8 that are a clear up grade at the position but you are not getting them or they are too old to get. The old guys are Matt Duchene 33, Brock Nelson 33, Evgeni Malkin, 38, John Tavares, 34,. The younger guys who you are not going to pry away are Jack Hughes 23, Logan Cooley 20 and Tim Stutzle 22. The middle age guys Sam Bennett 28, Anthony Cirelli 25 just are not going anywhere. Other than going after Pius Suter (pending UFA) or Pierre Luc Dubois (8.5M) long term. What are you going to do. Everyone says get somebody but I have not seen a realistic idea than makes sense.

One thing you notice when watchin this and other highlight videos is that he scores most of his goals when he is skating toward the net and shooting. He is not a tip in / rebound scoring type. Mostly a rush player. At least so far.

I have noticed a lot of the positioning issues at times. It was bad in the first few games. As the lines settled in it got cleaned up but during this streak it got bad to very bad again. Two players where one should be or worse smashing into each other. A few things to blame it on. Guy's not understanding the system, constant line shuffles, new players in the line up. or some players just not being part of the system. It's probably a little bit of all. I went from a coach who never changed his lines to a coach who will not settle on any line. There has to be a middle some place.

So not only are we losing our players to Palm trees we are now losing our posters?

Levi only gives up 1 goal against 1st place Laval last night. 3-1 Amerks win. They even got a rare power play goal.

I often look at the number of games a drafted player plays in the NHL. If a guy plays 500 or more NHL games in general you have made a good pick. For the most part once you get past the top 10 or 12 players in any draft the odds of someone playing that many games goes down pretty quick. You do want to make that top dozen pick to be a very good player. They are not always, and they are not always a fit for your team. People overestimate what you are going to get out of any draft. If you get 2 functional NHL players out of a draft you are on par or better than most other teams.

Oilers Make the claim.

Given the choices of all those combos I would take number 7. I hate using Krebs with Cozens and Benson. I don't like Krebs on any of the top 2 lines right now. He is a good for checker and can cycle well with the third or 4th lines but he is not a great passer and they never seem to know exactly where is going to be when they try to pass it to him. Benson can be a little erratic positionally as well but he is starting to develop chemistry with Cozens and Benson can back check well which helps. If there are no better options I will take Yuri on the right wing because he is strong enough and fast enough to get back and play D.

Lots of AHL players come up and play well for a few games then the reality of going against the top players in the world night after night sets in. By 10 games in they often become liabilities in the line up. Kulich has more speed skill and is more NHL ready than Kozak. I don't know why they sat him last game. I guess it was because Greenway came back and Lindy did not want to change the 4th line. As far as Johnson goes that was a big mistake putting him on the first pair if at all in the line up. If they want him to play they have to ease him in but I think he may be the third best D man in Rochester right now so I would have chosen Rathbone or Nikita depending on what was needed.

And the Power Play is even worse. at 14.5% vs 16.6% for all of last year. When is someone going to fix this?

I took the exercise of looking at every current second line center listed in the NHL per Daily Face Off. By the way Cozens is listed on the 3rd line wing so they must update this quickly. Just to indicate how tough this position is to fill Cozens has scored more goals than 16 other second line centers and is tied with 1 other. His points are lower than most, but he is also younger than most of them. There are 6 to 8 second line centers that a clearly better than him in scoring and talent, looking at scoring and NHL edge he is equal some and better than many. The shooting percentage holds him down the most. I will repeat it is a hard position to fill.

I think I am a little mis quoted or misunderstood. I did not indicate Benson quitting on play. It was in reference to the goal on Saturday where Cozens became immobile, which I am pretty sure was due to time on ice. It was the goal where Benson was chasing the puck carrier around the zone. The internet looks at one play and instantly Cozens is now a quitter. Forget all the back checking Cozens does to cover other mistakes made on this team. A quitter would not bother. Cozens make plenty of mistakes. He gets tied up in the O zone he misses assignments but if he is not making a play it's because he physically can not at that moment. I would not tag him or most players on this team as quitters. At least not yet.

It's a very difficult position to replace. As far as the cap space goes maybe he is not earning all of it right now but it's not as if that salary is blocking this team from bringing someone else in with the cap space we have. There are very few plays he has quit on. The play in question on Saturday was broken down by mjd1001 which pointed to Benson as being a problem among the issues of not getting off the ice when they should have as well as a Utah player coming unguarded into the zone. Yes he makes plenty of mistakes but I would not lay not trying or quitting on Cozens. Be careful what you wish for.

How Quinn has scored goals in the past is either shooting from the dots or hanging on the side of the net. Just watched his Amerk highlights and his 22-23 Sabres season highlights. He just not a guy who has been setting screens and tipping on shots. He was good on the rush and can feed players that way. You have to wonder why the Peterka, Cozens, Quinn line was so good in 22-23 but not effective the times they were together this year. They may have been the 3rd line that year and faced less attention than they do as a second line. There is good hockey in those guys someplace.

In Quinn's case it is logistical. At the beginning of the year they put together a roster where only 1 player could realistically be moved down and that was Levi. You can try to have him work through his problems or find a trade of disappointments, where he gets swapped for another guy who was supposed to be good but is not performing. You ask why coaches like Cozens? Adams kind of answered it when he said player development is not linear. They have ups and downs and they feel Cozens has an upside in him. I tend to think they are right on Cozens. You have often pointed out defensive lapses and positional issues that plague his game. Those are things that can be fixed. Cozens brings a lot of raw talent to the table. Go look at his skating and shoot speed on NHL edge. He is not quite where Thompson is but other than the goal percentage his metrics are good. Now go look at Quinn. Those metrics have never been very good. His skating is marginal and his shot speed is pretty weak. Cozens plays all situations and is an aggressive player. coaches like that. I don't thinks he is helping the power play at all but it doesn't mean he isn't out there trying hard most nights and most shifts. This year he has had almost no stability of who is on his wings and he is normally the oldest guy on the line. He needs a Tuch like player to play with to help his playmaking. He is starting to gel with Benson but with Peterka on the other wing you don't have a lot of size to help fight off the defensemen that is not a good line to have in the D zone. Benson also does not have good skating or shot speed metrics on NHL edge. Unlike Quinn he makes the most of what he does have. He has a lot of hustle in his game and often finds the right places to be. He is good along the walls, he steals pucks and sneaks his way into the front of the net. Cozens fights his way to the front of the net. I think the one thing that would help Cozens is to not to get caught up in physical engagements in the O zone as often as he does. He gets into wrestling matches that tie him up when the puck goes back the other way. At any rate Cozens is a much harder player to replace.

I would say you are right about it not being the city problem for many players. It is the nature of NHL contracts though that prevent a lot of trades. Playing GM in the box I have been looking through teams that want to sell and just about every player you would want has some type of no trade or no movement clause. Adams just admitted what a lot of people claim in this forum that it's harder to get players to come here, at least for right now. Truth be told there was nothing Adams could have said that was going to make anybody happy. He did make it worse by the palm tree statement but he has been consistent about the team building approach. The one thing about getting another forward which is a thing we certainly need, it's not just the money we have to clear a roster spot. We have 2 choices, Send Juri back down and put Quinn back in or trade a forward to try and get a better one. This Quinn problem has to be solved.

????? Box score and play by play shows Sandstorm played the whole game.

A few comments on last nights game. If I hear Kulich in with a chance instead of Kulich scores one more time I think I am going to therapy. I have been pretty impressed with his overall game but his lack of scoring has gotten into his head to the point where he is not sure if he should shoot. I do think there will be a turning point where he breaks out but it has been hard to watch. The zone entry's on the power play were better than the other night. Overall it still needs to be better. I don't think I like Krebs on the second unit. I only remember one drop back pass to the the two trailing forwards and that was Byram who did it correctly where he was confronted by the attacking forward dropped the puck back and engaged the Jet opening a path for entry to the zone. It sounds like Lindy is of the mind to call a review on just about every questionable goalie interference. I did not think I would have called the review at that time of the game. If Lindy wants to cut down on penalties he should start with himself.

Now that is what I would call a Toxic situation!

One place where I really like to look at plus minus is players in the AHL. Most young prospects tend to start off very negative even if they are scoring a lot. You want to see who is coming up look at the improvement in plus minus stats and you will see who is playing defense well enough for a call up.

I just wish I could see what your computer is telling you. Quinn maybe taking shots from good spots but he is not taking good shots. You can blame Cozens for a lot of things this year but I would not put Quinn's poor play on him. Quinn has rarely found open Ice, he only has 43 shots on goal which is around 1.8 a game, with a 3.9 shot attempt per game average. I don't know where Quinn's shot has gone, he can be an effective sniper when right but It has to start with getting open enough to hit the net. He has been better at finding some spots of late but where is the real production?

He was week to week with an upper body at the start of November. Not sure of his status but that week to week has turned into a month.

The Amerks played last night so I can't see Ryan Johnson being in the lineup tonight. Even if he does get in it will probably be a 7 -10 min of ice time game. Before we declare him a replacement for anybody would like to see him score at least 1 goal in the AHL.