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Wild vs. Leafs - Mar. 15th, 7:30pm - SN

The ever reliable Simon Benoit botching a won DZ faceoff exit lol

Oh good Wild back in it; tank you

Tarasenko strikes for back to back goals in less than a minute
 
McCabe blocked a shot with his ribs and is off to the dressing room.

The Tank demands MOAR BENOIT

Edit: McCabe is back already
 
dappleganger said:
This front office is not good at pro-scouting.
Click to expand...

I think they're ok at it; but their directives tend to be off-mark (scouts instructed to chase something ultimately ineffective) and then their coaching deployment sewers whatever potential there might be if they do find a gem (Steeves, etc).

Under Dubas, they had significant alignment on the type of player to pursue and got a lot of cheapos that were effective in those attributes (puck skills); however, they basically ignored off-puck abilities like persistent and consistent forechecking, hence the difficulties in the playoffs when too much puckholding, especially by smaller players, is kind of a liability. They chased it with depth D and Fs that didn't really have the right play system to excel (cycle breaking and forechecking can't be a solo-effort).

Under Treliving, most of the supporting depth in the prospect pipeline weren't geared in the direction he and Berube wanted to go, and in this second season together, there's significant misalignment between GM and Coach (and with player leaders -- see how the team has forechecky jump every time Matthews is off). The guys that the GM brought in are generally not being used where they can be effective for the team (Laughton, Cowan, Steeves, trying Marlies in general). Most effective players this year seem to be the ones that are too new to know the coaching (early Stecher, Groulx), or are ambivalent to the coaching (Nylander). Pro-scouting ain't fixing that.
 
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Ultimately, while I would like the team to get their draft pick back (especially if they end up top 3-4 in the end and can get one of McKenna/Stenlund/Verhoeff/Reid) I also don't want to see the team be intentionally bad.

If they play games like the 3rd period against Anaheim or 2/3 of the Minnesota game, I'm fine with that. There are major flaws with this roster. I still think there are enough good pieces of this team that they can make this team more competitive without completely tearing down (not as convinced they can retool enough to win a Cup).

Knies has looked better. Nylander has looked good. Cowan and Robertson have looked good. The goalies have been good. Those are pieces that will matter next year and I would rather see those players look good than not.

Bo Groulx right now looks like a guy who deserves a chance to be in the starting lineup next year. Quillan hasn't had the ice time to really judge him but has made a number of nice plays that are encouraging.

Hopefully we can see a few more guys get an opportunity before the season is done. This team will still lose a lot of these games and while it would have been great to get within 2 points of the bottom 5....the team is in a better position to make that happen today than they were 2 weeks ago.
 
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