Just wait and see if we actually lose the draft lottery....that will be the ultimate nut kicker
Essentially a 50/50 shot. The last-place team has retained the #1 pick the last 4 years in a row, though, so it seems like the law of averages is going to work against us.
The NFC won the Super Bowl coin toss 14 years in a row (before losing it this year), so let's hope a similar streak continues for the draft lottery.
Essentially a 50/50 shot. The last-place team has retained the #1 pick the last 4 years in a row, though, so it seems like the law of averages is going to work against us.
The NFC won the Super Bowl coin toss 14 years in a row (before losing it this year), so let's hope a similar streak continues for the draft lottery.
48% chance we get the 1st pick, I'm counting on the 2nd pick, and of course, Yakupov will win the Calder in MTL. Oh well, part of me wants Grigorenko anyways....I get Svitov flashbacks when I see his youtube clips, and he's still just 17.
48% chance we get the 1st pick, I'm counting on the 2nd pick, and of course, Yakupov will win the Calder in MTL. Oh well, part of me wants Grigorenko anyways....I get Svitov flashbacks when I see his youtube clips, and he's still just 17.
Inconsistent work ethic, lazy penalties galore, and absolutely none of the scoring at the NHL level that he was supposed to do?
I understand that Priest shares responsibility for this mess, but it's the GM's job to put a good team on the ice and to either resist the interference from non-hockey personnel or quit in protest. For me, it comes down to Howson, he's the face of the front office and he should take the fall for this season (and those awful ones that preceded it!). I'm already renewed, so I'm not in the same place as this poster, but my level of interest and support will be linked to who sits in the General Manager's chair. For me, at a minimum, there must be a new face as GM and another as coach. Otherwise, we're just continuing to swim in our own excrement.
Pete, I agree with your post. However, the fact that Howson is still the GM is beyond unforgiveable, imo. I can't envision Howson surviving this long with any other NHL club. Priest must be held accountable for not making a GM move. If Junior is telling Priest not to make a move, then Junior starts losing his fan base. I believe the change has to start with Priest. Junior needs to grow some nads.
I look for Howson to trade Nash and the draft pick for a solid fourth liner.
Nah. he might get a conditional pick as well as long as that team wins the cup two years in a row.
As for the lowest point...yeah, this is my lowest point in the past 12 years. I haven't watched a game on TV since before New Year's Eve. Before this season, I made sure I wasn't anywhere I couldn't watch a game. Now I couldn't care less.
This is probably the lowest point. For the first time, I'm really not looking forward to a home game. Detroit will roll us, their grease-sweating fans will outnumber us.
The next lowest point will be when Edmonton wins the draft lottery.
Picking a low point as a Blue Jackets fan isn't an easy thing.
However...................
When one looks on the ice and realizes that there is one top 6 forward (Nash) on the entire roster, then the stark reality of this franchise sets in. Brassard, Umgarbage, Prospal, Johansen, Atkinson, nor any other forward on this roster is ideal top 6 material on any decent team. Atkinson may grow into a top 6 role, but forget the rest.
Here's where I see the forwards on the Jackets:
Nash....top liner on a good team (obviously)
Brassard is a third line center.
Umgarbage isn't even on the roster of a mediocre team.
Johansen looks more and more like a bust every game. I don't think he skates well enough to make room at the NHL level to score like he did in juniors. He's absolutely butter soft to boot.
Prospal is a stop gap top sixer......Father Time is taking its inevitable toll.
Atkinson shows some good signs to me......he skates well and seems to have decent vision. I think he's acquitted himself quite well in his first NHL stint.
A team which is so lacking in essential scoring is going nowhere. Unless the team can deal Nash for a top sixer and a draft pick who can contribute immediately AND sign a decent UFA, this team will still have about as bad a core of top 6 forwards as anyone in the league.
And that makes for a season of continuous low points.
__________________
"Every game, every point is a necessity." -- Ty Conklin, January 2007
"I'll have a chance to compete for the post of first issue. This is the most important thing." -- Sergei Bobrovsky, June 2012
Thanks, it's hard to abandon a hobby you're passionate about, one people know you for, but it just doesn't make sense anymore. I'll finish up the remaining games on my STH pack, and call it a season.
Sure a lot of it has to do with there being a newborn in the house, but I'm just so tired of all the effort I put into being a Jackets fan.
Making the 4 hour drive for 2 hour training camps and practices.
Making the 4 hour drive for a dozen or so games I've paid for.
Fighting with the cable company to try and see Jackets games instead of Cavs games, spending 2 periods on hold because they didn't flip a switch in the head end
Buying GameCenter live, and having to proxy my way around the blackouts so that I can actually see the games I paid for.
Watching both the home and away feeds of a yet another loss to see what highlights I can find.
Calling / texting / emailing over 45 people in an effort to even GIVE tickets away to something nobody wants to go see.
Who knows what the offseason will be, but I kind of see myself becoming the same type of "fan" that I am of the Indians. One that checks the paper every other month or so to check the standings.
I missed this the first time around.
At first it made furious with CBJ management, at how they have squandered the passion & fanaticism of their customers.
And then, it just made me unbelievably sad. Truly a tragedy for the CBJ organ-i-zation.
But in the final analysis, Skraut and his family are much, much better for it. I affirm you.
This is the lowest point ever! Fan apathy is off the charts, no seems to care any more, hope for improvement is gone! It all boils down to the clueless clowns running the team. They have no idea what they are doing and the owner is lost in space with no idea of what is going on! How much longer can this go on? How much longer before we end up like Atlanta?
This video is exactly what I was going to post!! nicely done.
Every single day in a world where Priest and Howson continue to run the franchise is worse than the one before it. That means that every single successive day is my lowest point as a Jackets fan.
Therefore today is my lowest point as a Jackets fan.
CR, you make a devastating case for the argument that we are at an all time low: One top six forward on the team and he wants out. Five years as GM and Howson has John Moore and Ryan Johansen as the best he could produce out of his first round picks.
CR, you make a devastating case for the argument that we are at an all time low: One top six forward on the team and he wants out. Five years as GM and Howson has John Moore and Ryan Johansen as the best he could produce out of his first round picks.
The Western Hockey League has produced nothing but busts and mediocrity among every forward drafted from 2000-2009 in the top 10 of the NHL draft. 2011 #1 overall pick Ryan Nugent Hopkins looks like he is a sure thing to break this trend, but at the time which the Jackets drafted Johansen (2010), the evidence seemed pretty overwhelming that the WHL was not a breeding ground for top or even very good NHL scorers over a substantial amount of time.
Evander Kane and Joffrey Lupul are the shining WHL foward top 10 NHL draft picks in the 10 years which proceeded Johansen's selection. These two players have averaged roughly .6 points per game in their NHL careers. This translates to roughly 50 points per season. And these guys are the best of the approximately 15 WHL forwards who were picked in the top 10 of the 2000-09 NHL drafts. In Kane's case, to be fair, he's a third year player and it appears that he has upside beyond 50 points.
That screening process (a surface evaluation of 10 years of drafting) took me around 10 minutes. I wonder if the Scott Howson had this surface type evidence as a part of his drafting metrics? I tend to doubt it.
While I understand that this little pseudo analysis doesn't take into account all that much, I think it shows that any expected upside of Johansen beyond 50 points per season must have been based on something very unique about this kid or the Jackets really think that 50 points per season is an acceptable target for a 4rth overall pick.
I don't see anything special about him and 50 points per season isn't exactly a high bar to set for a top 5 pick-in fact it's absurdly low. Just another reason to have another low regarding the lowly Jackets.
Last edited by Cyclones Rock: 03-28-2012 at 04:18 AM.
The Western Hockey League has produced nothing but busts and mediocrity among every forward drafted from 2000-2009 in the top 10 of the NHL draft. 2011 #1 overall pick Ryan Nugent Hopkins looks like he is a sure thing to break this trend, but at the time which the Jackets drafted Johansen (2010), the evidence seemed pretty overwhelming that the WHL was not a breeding ground for top or even very good NHL scorers over a substantial amount of time.
Evander Kane and Joffrey Lupul are the shining WHL foward top 10 NHL draft picks in the 10 years which proceeded Johansen's selection. These two players have averaged roughly .6 points per game in their NHL careers. This translates to roughly 50 points per season. And these guys are the best of the approximately 15 WHL forwards who were picked in the top 10 of the 2000-09 NHL drafts. In Kane's case, to be fair, he's a third year player and it appears that he has upside beyond 50 points.
That screening process (a surface evaluation of 10 years of drafting) took me around 10 minutes. I wonder if the Scott Howson had this surface type evidence as a part of his drafting metrics? I tend to doubt it.
While I understand that this little pseudo analysis doesn't take into account all that much, I think it shows that any expected upside of Johansen beyond 50 points per season must have been based on something very unique about this kid or the Jackets really think that 50 points per season is an acceptable target for a 4rth overall pick.
I don't see anything special about him and 50 points per season isn't exactly a high bar to set for a top 5 pick-in fact it's absurdly low. Just another reason to have another low regarding the lowly Jackets.
That's not a screening process, that's drawing a pattern where there is none. Presenting it as somehow meaningful or groundbreaking is ridiculous.
To handle your points in order:
1) The WHL as a non-breeding ground. A few years ago, people were begging Matt Millen to draft anyone except a wide receiver, since his track record with receivers in the first round was extremely poor. Since the Lions needed a pass rush badly, it was hoped that he would take Gaines Adams (DE) out of Clemson.
Millen ignored them and took Calvin Johnson. Imagine what would have happened if he hadn't....Johnson is an All-Pro, and Adams died of a cardiac episode related to an undetected heart condition. Adams' death isn't necessarily relevant to the discussion, but how awful would the Lions be without Calvin Johnson?
2) Evander Kane is just barely into his NHL career, and you're already capped his vast potential at 50 points. This is despite the fact that, as a goal-scoring forward, his point totals will be naturally depressed because he's more reliant on a playmaking linemate. Look no further than our own #61 to find evidence of this. He can score 30 or 40 goals every year until the cows come home, and all that the Leafs fans will say is that he doesn't have this many points. They usually say this when someone says that Nazem Kadri isn't as good as Nash, so the sour grapes complex becomes evident.
3) The number of WHL forwards drafted is pretty small. In 2000 was Scott Hartnell. 2002 was Scottie Upshall and Joffrey Lupul. 2004 was Andrew Ladd. 2005 were Gilbert Brule and Devin Setoguchi. 2006 is Peter Mueller. 2007 was Zach Hamill. 2009 was Evander Kane, Brayden Schenn, and Scott Glennie. 2010 were Johansen, Nino Niederreiter, and Brett Connolly. 2011 was Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
Now, perhaps I'm misremembering 12 years worth of drafts (I'm not), but the only two of those guys who were drafted that were labeled "scoring forward" instead of "power forward" were Johansen and Nugent-Hopkins, and Mueller to a lesser extent.
4) I'd have to imagine that NHL teams do not use anything like this "surface metric" because it makes no sense. Why stop there? For a long time, teams shied away from taking American players at all and in any way because it was thought that the passion and skill weren't there. Then it was European players who were too soft to play on the smaller surfaces, then when that was disproved it was that they couldn't make it in the playoffs, then when that was disproved it was that they couldn't lead a team...you get the idea.
5) You've capped Johansen at 50 points per season. He's still 19 years old.
6) You don't see anything special about him...well, that's lovely. Plenty of other people, including a lot of people in the NHL, do.
7) A 19-year-old not having a great first pro season is a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Well, I know that plenty were ready to do the same in Boston when Joe Thornton had a 7-point rookie season. Good thing no one listened.
Oh, and by the way, at the time that Thornton was drafted, everyone "knew" that the OHL wasn't producing scoring forwards since all of their recent products weren't top-line NHLers.
No. You are Howson's dog and he's been kicking you for years and yet you continue to take it and maybe even, if some are to be believed, enjoy it. Get out now before he makes you start fetching his Tom Collins' to the owner's box where he, Priest and JPM are playing the violin.
