Definitely an exciting idea…wouldn’t it be great if we did better than expected and made a deep run in ’24-25?
I’m sending good net-finding vibes to KK. If he’s on the team this year, I’m really rooting for him to find the spark.
ShrillRut
Landing Drai would be wild.
All I’ll say is that we live or die on Kooch’s back. We’ve seen Igor carry mediocre Rags teams deep into the playoffs for years now. If we make playoffs and Kooch goes nuclear then who knows how far we’ll go. Either way I think this will be a fun season!
oooriole09
We as fans should toss “intentional down year” out and see it as a “figure things out” year.
Figure out what you have in the rookies/prospects. Figure out what you have in Kochetkov. Figure out what you have in underperforming players like KK. Figure out if there’s some positional growth/change for player like Jarvis. Figure out what you have in Necas either as an asset or a player ceiling.
The biggest thing is that they haven’t overspent for a compromise player. Cap flexibility goes a long way in a strict cap league.
Serett
I think the down year talk is overstated. It sucks losing Guentzel, but (a) that’s the only thing I’m convinced hurts us significantly so far and (b) he was a late acquisition and it’s not like this was a bad team without him.
Losing Pesce and Skjei isn’t good, but I’m not convinced it significantly hurts us. Pesce was out for (edit for accuracy: most of) the playoffs anyway, Orlov and Chatfield are a solid second line, and our new third line looks likely above average for the league. Is there some loss here, sure, but it’s small enough that Kochetkov and our young forwards can more than outweigh it with another year of growth.
I appreciated Teuvo, but he hasn’t felt integral to this team or its performance for a couple of years. This wasn’t the guy we were plugging into our top line with our budding stars anymore, and I don’t think there will be a meaningful drop-off from losing him.
I don’t love losing Noesen, especially because he was affordable, but everything I’ve seen is that the cheaper guys we’ve brought in are similar favorable WAR grinders.
Necas has the potential to be a significant loss, except that we’re still expecting a return for him. If you get another 50+ point player like Ehlers in return, this isn’t really a loss.
I just don’t buy that this is an impending catastrophe. In the end, assuming a reasonable replacement for Necas, I think this season will turn on our young players’ continued development, performance in net, and our system. I don’t see anything that outweighs or substantially burdens any of that relative to the start of last year.
randydweller
Just give KK a full 82 games at 2C with Svech at this point. Rain or shine at least we have an answer.
The_Reddit_Browser
Team still has the back end and goaltending to make the playoffs so saying it’s a “down year” is not really true.
We also always win round 1 (covid nonsense excluded)
Our team went to the ECF running guys like Walmark, brown, Saku, Mckegg, etc.
As long as GMET can get another piece or two to replace Necas there should be enough young guys to mix in for our offense this year. It’s not like we haven’t been relying on just 2 players to run our offensive production since 18-19.
25-26 is going to be an incredible season and with Nikishin coming over it will be so much fun but, we got a lot of great talent coming to camp that will make this year something worth watching.
Like17Badgers
instead of $2m on the 4th liner we could also pull up Lemieux and put that money into chasing Drai or the 2nd goalie.
7 Comments
Definitely an exciting idea…wouldn’t it be great if we did better than expected and made a deep run in ’24-25?
I’m sending good net-finding vibes to KK. If he’s on the team this year, I’m really rooting for him to find the spark.
Landing Drai would be wild.
All I’ll say is that we live or die on Kooch’s back. We’ve seen Igor carry mediocre Rags teams deep into the playoffs for years now. If we make playoffs and Kooch goes nuclear then who knows how far we’ll go. Either way I think this will be a fun season!
We as fans should toss “intentional down year” out and see it as a “figure things out” year.
Figure out what you have in the rookies/prospects. Figure out what you have in Kochetkov. Figure out what you have in underperforming players like KK. Figure out if there’s some positional growth/change for player like Jarvis. Figure out what you have in Necas either as an asset or a player ceiling.
The biggest thing is that they haven’t overspent for a compromise player. Cap flexibility goes a long way in a strict cap league.
I think the down year talk is overstated. It sucks losing Guentzel, but (a) that’s the only thing I’m convinced hurts us significantly so far and (b) he was a late acquisition and it’s not like this was a bad team without him.
Losing Pesce and Skjei isn’t good, but I’m not convinced it significantly hurts us. Pesce was out for (edit for accuracy: most of) the playoffs anyway, Orlov and Chatfield are a solid second line, and our new third line looks likely above average for the league. Is there some loss here, sure, but it’s small enough that Kochetkov and our young forwards can more than outweigh it with another year of growth.
I appreciated Teuvo, but he hasn’t felt integral to this team or its performance for a couple of years. This wasn’t the guy we were plugging into our top line with our budding stars anymore, and I don’t think there will be a meaningful drop-off from losing him.
I don’t love losing Noesen, especially because he was affordable, but everything I’ve seen is that the cheaper guys we’ve brought in are similar favorable WAR grinders.
Necas has the potential to be a significant loss, except that we’re still expecting a return for him. If you get another 50+ point player like Ehlers in return, this isn’t really a loss.
I just don’t buy that this is an impending catastrophe. In the end, assuming a reasonable replacement for Necas, I think this season will turn on our young players’ continued development, performance in net, and our system. I don’t see anything that outweighs or substantially burdens any of that relative to the start of last year.
Just give KK a full 82 games at 2C with Svech at this point. Rain or shine at least we have an answer.
Team still has the back end and goaltending to make the playoffs so saying it’s a “down year” is not really true.
We also always win round 1 (covid nonsense excluded)
Our team went to the ECF running guys like Walmark, brown, Saku, Mckegg, etc.
As long as GMET can get another piece or two to replace Necas there should be enough young guys to mix in for our offense this year. It’s not like we haven’t been relying on just 2 players to run our offensive production since 18-19.
25-26 is going to be an incredible season and with Nikishin coming over it will be so much fun but, we got a lot of great talent coming to camp that will make this year something worth watching.
instead of $2m on the 4th liner we could also pull up Lemieux and put that money into chasing Drai or the 2nd goalie.