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Mitch Marner: what now?

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Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Heh.  Never stop being precious, Nik.  It's endearing.

I wish I could say the same about you trying to get personal when it's clear that your nonsense has been seen through but, well, I've gotten used to it being your only move.
 
ZBBM, man, you're reaching here. I really don't get what you're trying to argue. Are you saying Edmonton did nothing wrong in the drafting in development of Yakupov and Puljujarvi? Cause boy that's bad.
 
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
They failed to develop their 10-ten picks, huh? I'll wait with rapt anticipation your precise explanation of exactly what they did that ruined, I say ruined, Yakupov and Puljujarvi -- who would be superstars today if only they had been chosen to by some other team.

Good draft picks can always be ruined by expectations and circumstance. They might?ve reached on these picks, but blinded by the slot, treated them according to that number rather than an honest assessment. Edmonton has a track record here that is hard to dispute: too much expectation on their top picks, ridiculously bad handling of teens transitioning to a completely new country, confidence crushed in prime development years, player reputations railroaded and dragged through the mud that is Edmonton media.

The Leafs, to get to where they are today, did both right with 16, 29. Nylander could?ve been dropped into the Carlyle tire fire as a saviour and been burned out for his lack of defense. They let him excel in Sweden and then pulled him into the AHL once Modo started to show no signs of fixing their imminent implosion. Hell, Frederik Gauthier played playoff minutes because of the development program.
 
herman said:
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
They failed to develop their 10-ten picks, huh? I'll wait with rapt anticipation your precise explanation of exactly what they did that ruined, I say ruined, Yakupov and Puljujarvi -- who would be superstars today if only they had been chosen to by some other team.

Good draft picks can always be ruined by expectations and circumstance. They might?ve reached on these picks, but blinded by the slot, treated them according to that number rather than an honest assessment. Edmonton has a track record here that is hard to dispute: too much expectation on their top picks, ridiculously bad handling of teens transitioning to a completely new country, confidence crushed in prime development years, player reputations railroaded and dragged through the mud that is Edmonton media.

The Leafs, to get to where they are today, did both right with 34, 16, 29. Nylander could?ve been dropped into the Carlyle tire fire as a saviour and been burned out for his lack of defense. They let him excel in Sweden and then pulled him into the AHL once Modo started to show no signs of fixing their imminent implosion.

I really didn't want to entertain this nonsense as deserving of dissection but...

There's no question that there is no hard and fast quantifiable proof of what the best way to develop a player is. This is because developing players is a mixture of various approaches that need to be individually suited to every player. David Pastrnak, who very well may be the most successful player from Nylander's draft, did get thrown into the NHL quickly. Nylander didn't.

The problem is in making the leap from "there is no simple formula" to "clearly there's effectively no such thing as player development". Because the question posed here can be applied to anyone. If we're only supposed to give credit for "player development" if a player is drafted outside of the first ten picks, then what specific things did those teams do to develop their players? What did the Leafs do with Johnsson? If they had the secret to develop Johnsson, how come they didn't with guys they took 100 picks ahead of him?

Truth is,  when it comes to player development, all we do is let the narrative serve the facts. Some guys thrive at being thrown in the deep end, for others it's too much too soon. We don't know until we see it. But to deny we've seen it once the results, or lack thereof, are in front of us is just wilful ignorance at best.

The thing is that aside from yet another meaningless detour into semantics that certain posters delight in rather than talking about actual ideas, this isn't even relevant to the point. If "development" is a canard and who does or doesn't succeed is just blind luck, it's still not a reason for a team to be punished because they got particularly lucky in a few drafts in a row.
 
herman said:
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
They failed to develop their 10-ten picks, huh? I'll wait with rapt anticipation your precise explanation of exactly what they did that ruined, I say ruined, Yakupov and Puljujarvi -- who would be superstars today if only they had been chosen to by some other team.

Good draft picks can always be ruined by expectations and circumstance. They might?ve reached on these picks, but blinded by the slot, treated them according to that number rather than an honest assessment. Edmonton has a track record here that is hard to dispute: too much expectation on their top picks, ridiculously bad handling of teens transitioning to a completely new country, confidence crushed in prime development years, player reputations railroaded and dragged through the mud that is Edmonton media.

The Leafs, to get to where they are today, did both right with 16, 29. Nylander could?ve been dropped into the Carlyle tire fire as a saviour and been burned out for his lack of defense. They let him excel in Sweden and then pulled him into the AHL once Modo started to show no signs of fixing their imminent implosion. Hell, Frederik Gauthier played playoff minutes because of the development program.

So, my claim was that post-draft development "played at best a minor role" with the Leafs' 3 top 10 picks.  I guess we can argue over whether their handling of Marner & Nylander constituted something more than a minor role; I don't think it did, but you disagree, obviously. 

To generalize that, with the examples from EDM, makes our disagreement clearer.  If post-draft player development of top 10 picks is a major factor in success or not, there would have to be some great difference in how EDM handled Yak and Puljujarvi as opposed to say Draisatl and RNG (and of course the jury's still out on Puljujarvi).  Maybe there has been, but I'm skeptical.

Anyway, this is all a side issue to the main point of my original post, which was to suggest there are ways you could conceive of really rewarding teams' player development without getting rid of a salary cap.
 
Read an interesting interpretation on Timo Meier's contract. First, this is what the breakdown of his 4 year, $6mil AAV deal is:

Year 1: $4mil
Year 2: $4mil
Year 3: $6mil
Year 4: $10mil

So they loaded up most of the money into the final year of his contract. At the end of year 4 Meier will be a year away from being an UFA. But the key thing here is that qualifying offers are based off the previous years salary, not AAV. So the Sharks would need to give Meier a 1-year qualifying offer of $10mil after this contract to keep his rights. That means he either cashes in with that 1 year deal and then has UFA status after that, or the Sharks don't qualify him at that number and he becomes an UFA right away.

Wonder if this is a tactic we see with Marner's deal.
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Read an interesting interpretation on Timo Meier's contract. First, this is what the breakdown of his 4 year, $6mil AAV deal is:

Year 1: $4mil
Year 2: $4mil
Year 3: $6mil
Year 4: $10mil

So they loaded up most of the money into the final year of his contract. At the end of year 4 Meier will be a year away from being an UFA. But the key thing here is that qualifying offers are based off the previous years salary, not AAV. So the Sharks would need to give Meier a 1-year qualifying offer of $10mil after this contract to keep his rights. That means he either cashes in with that 1 year deal and then has UFA status after that, or the Sharks don't qualify him at that number and he becomes an UFA right away.

Wonder if this is a tactic we see with Marner's deal.
Interesting so you're saying that this is really a 5 year deal that should have a cap hit of $6.8? You get 4 years at 6M and one at 10M. I don't think there's a benefit except he is taking less to get to UFA earlier.

But, the team or the player can walk from a qualifying offer. A wink and handshake agreement is cap circumvention. Like the concept but I don't think it passes the kosher test.
 
cabber24 said:
But, the team or the player can walk from a qualifying offer. A wink and handshake agreement is cap circumvention. Like the concept but I don't think it passes the kosher test.

Player can't walk from the QO. Team can decide not to present one, but, if one is presented, the player's only options are sign a contract/offer sheet, go to arbitration, or hold out. What this deal does is force San Jose's hand heading into the 4th year of the deal. At that point, they'll have to decide on Meier's future with the team, because there's basically no way they go with a 1 year contract after this deal. It'll either be a long-term deal or a trade.
 
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
herman said:
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
They failed to develop their 10-ten picks, huh? I'll wait with rapt anticipation your precise explanation of exactly what they did that ruined, I say ruined, Yakupov and Puljujarvi -- who would be superstars today if only they had been chosen to by some other team.

Good draft picks can always be ruined by expectations and circumstance. They might?ve reached on these picks, but blinded by the slot, treated them according to that number rather than an honest assessment. Edmonton has a track record here that is hard to dispute: too much expectation on their top picks, ridiculously bad handling of teens transitioning to a completely new country, confidence crushed in prime development years, player reputations railroaded and dragged through the mud that is Edmonton media.

The Leafs, to get to where they are today, did both right with 16, 29. Nylander could?ve been dropped into the Carlyle tire fire as a saviour and been burned out for his lack of defense. They let him excel in Sweden and then pulled him into the AHL once Modo started to show no signs of fixing their imminent implosion. Hell, Frederik Gauthier played playoff minutes because of the development program.

So, my claim was that post-draft development "played at best a minor role" with the Leafs' 3 top 10 picks.  I guess we can argue over whether their handling of Marner & Nylander constituted something more than a minor role; I don't think it did, but you disagree, obviously. 

To generalize that, with the examples from EDM, makes our disagreement clearer.  If post-draft player development of top 10 picks is a major factor in success or not, there would have to be some great difference in how EDM handled Yak and Puljujarvi as opposed to say Draisatl and RNG (and of course the jury's still out on Puljujarvi).  Maybe there has been, but I'm skeptical.

Anyway, this is all a side issue to the main point of my original post, which was to suggest there are ways you could conceive of really rewarding teams' player development without getting rid of a salary cap.

Not necessarily. It may have been they were all handled exactly the same, developed in the same broken system, and not all were able to succeed as a result.
 
bustaheims said:
cabber24 said:
But, the team or the player can walk from a qualifying offer. A wink and handshake agreement is cap circumvention. Like the concept but I don't think it passes the kosher test.

Player can't walk from the QO. Team can decide not to present one, but, if one is presented, the player's only options are sign a contract/offer sheet, go to arbitration, or hold out. What this deal does is force San Jose's hand heading into the 4th year of the deal. At that point, they'll have to decide on Meier's future with the team, because there's basically no way they go with a 1 year contract after this deal. It'll either be a long-term deal or a trade.
Not signing it, is walking away from QO in my book.
 
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
50 Mission Cap said:
Nik the Trik said:
CarltonTheBear said:
The guys who are putting pressure on the Leafs cap were drafted 1st, 4th, 8th, 22nd and 202nd. The idea that any league should think there should be a downside to that sort of player development...that needs to get fixed before anything else.

In three sentences you reduced the "pro salary cap" argument to ashes. Well played indeed! Seriously, how does a professional league create a system that punishes you for being too good at prospecting/player development.
While Nik's point makes intuitive sense, the counterargument would be that the 1, 4, and 8 (at least) picks hardly represent player "development" --  you, me, and Joe Blow from Kokomo could have made those choices and then sat back and watch 34, 16, and 29 unroll their natural talents. In seriousness, development from the Leafs, post-draft, played at best a minor role in the blossoming of these guys.

But farther down the draft, Nik is on to something. If you want to address it while not throwing out the cap, how about this idea: pro-rate the salary cap by a player's draft position?

1-10 picks: 100% of salary counts against the cap
11-20: 90%
21-30: 80%
and so on down to
91-100: 10%
101 and below: 0%

Heck, you could even make it so any player drafted 150th or below would increase your team's cap by 5% or something.

This kind of a system would actually reward teams for being successful in developing less-heralded players.  And if you begin thinking about the ramifications, they would be fascinating.  Teams holding the #10 pick trading down to #11 to get a potential 10% discount on the cap, etc.

The league has no incentive to make changes like this.

The league put the salary cap in place to try to guarantee both parity and cost certainty.  The league doesn?t really want teams that are better at X (for any X) to win more often I don?t think.  In this specific case, I don?t imagine they would care to give advantages to teams that are good at player development.  If they did, Toronto would throw even more money at it and would gain an advantage. The league is more likely to go in the other direction if Toronto is overly successful: slap constraints on how much you can spend on development to prevent a spending race along that dimension.
 
cabber24 said:
Not signing it, is walking away from QO in my book.

Okay, but, functionally, it?s not. The player doesn?t benefit in any real way. In fact, it doesn?t really change anything for them except take away an option.
 
princedpw said:
The league has no incentive to make changes like this.

The league put the salary cap in place to try to guarantee both parity and cost certainty.  The league doesn?t really want teams that are better at X (for any X) to win more often I don?t think.  In this specific case, I don?t imagine they would care to give advantages to teams that are good at player development.  If they did, Toronto would throw even more money at it and would gain an advantage. The league is more likely to go in the other direction if Toronto is overly successful: slap constraints on how much you can spend on development to prevent a spending race along that dimension.

I think this isn't quite right, because what isn't being acknowledged here is that guys like Kapanen and Johnsson, and Marner, all have trade value if you can't sign them to stay under the cap...good value in futures that you can use to make deadline deals to add players at significantly less hit in the spring for a Cup run...or used in the summer to throw into deals so that you can dump your shitty contracts elsewhere.

There is still plenty of additional value to developing great players, even in this cap system.
 
princedpw said:
The league has no incentive to make changes like this.

The league put the salary cap in place to try to guarantee both parity and cost certainty.  The league doesn?t really want teams that are better at X (for any X) to win more often I don?t think.  In this specific case, I don?t imagine they would care to give advantages to teams that are good at player development.  If they did, Toronto would throw even more money at it and would gain an advantage. The league is more likely to go in the other direction if Toronto is overly successful: slap constraints on how much you can spend on development to prevent a spending race along that dimension.

That's a pretty abstract concept of what "the league" is when really it's just made up of teams, many of whom have been negatively affected in a competitive sense on-ice by the cap.
 
princedpw said:
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
50 Mission Cap said:
Nik the Trik said:
CarltonTheBear said:
The guys who are putting pressure on the Leafs cap were drafted 1st, 4th, 8th, 22nd and 202nd. The idea that any league should think there should be a downside to that sort of player development...that needs to get fixed before anything else.

In three sentences you reduced the "pro salary cap" argument to ashes. Well played indeed! Seriously, how does a professional league create a system that punishes you for being too good at prospecting/player development.
While Nik's point makes intuitive sense, the counterargument would be that the 1, 4, and 8 (at least) picks hardly represent player "development" --  you, me, and Joe Blow from Kokomo could have made those choices and then sat back and watch 34, 16, and 29 unroll their natural talents. In seriousness, development from the Leafs, post-draft, played at best a minor role in the blossoming of these guys.

But farther down the draft, Nik is on to something. If you want to address it while not throwing out the cap, how about this idea: pro-rate the salary cap by a player's draft position?

1-10 picks: 100% of salary counts against the cap
11-20: 90%
21-30: 80%
and so on down to
91-100: 10%
101 and below: 0%

Heck, you could even make it so any player drafted 150th or below would increase your team's cap by 5% or something.

This kind of a system would actually reward teams for being successful in developing less-heralded players.  And if you begin thinking about the ramifications, they would be fascinating.  Teams holding the #10 pick trading down to #11 to get a potential 10% discount on the cap, etc.

The league has no incentive to make changes like this.

The league put the salary cap in place to try to guarantee both parity and cost certainty.  The league doesn?t really want teams that are better at X (for any X) to win more often I don?t think.  In this specific case, I don?t imagine they would care to give advantages to teams that are good at player development.  If they did, Toronto would throw even more money at it and would gain an advantage. The league is more likely to go in the other direction if Toronto is overly successful: slap constraints on how much you can spend on development to prevent a spending race along that dimension.

You may well be right.  The likelihood of the league changing the cap wasn't what I was addressing, though.  50 Mission Cap asked how can the NHL create a system (the cap) that punishes teams that are good at development.  I was just putting out an idea to reverse that without getting rid of the cap (which I am neutral about).
 
cabber24 said:
Deebo said:
After the latest two signing, barring any more moves, it leaves just under 10M for Marner.
Ceci at 4.5M hurts. I don't see anyone else for less available though.

Same cap hit as Zaitsev but for only 1 year.  Even if he's a total disaster it's only this season.  Hopefully whatever the Leafs see in him can be brought out with better situations and a better overall team in front of him
 
Deebo said:
After the latest two signing, barring any more moves, it leaves just under 10M for Marner.

Who would they move if Marner gets 11? Seems like Hyman would be the only option. Unless they're trying to move Ceci, but I doubt that.
 
Bill_Berg said:
Deebo said:
After the latest two signing, barring any more moves, it leaves just under 10M for Marner.

Who would they move if Marner gets 11? Seems like Hyman would be the only option. Unless they're trying to move Ceci, but I doubt that.

Marner won't get 11. But Hyman and Dermott starting on LTIR gives them space, no?
 
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