[TRADE] Dubnyk to the Wild

[4T2]

OMG, should I drop Rask for Dubnyk?!?!?

Look out Chicago/St Lous/LA/Anaheim! Minny is on their way to the Cup now!

[znith]

I'm wondering if now is the time to pan him off. An easy upcoming schedule will inflate his value and then sell, sell, sell????? Years of mediocrity on bad teams makes it hard to judge him, but I'm not sold on him.

Eh, your team looks pretty good but you lost Rinne for 3-5 weeks, and who knows how long Mrazek will be the starter. I'd be holding on to Dubie as a stop gap.

[Zorro]

Doooooooobie will drop the ball again by the end of the weekend.. Kuemper is the future..

[ericdaoust]

Doooooooobie will drop the ball again by the end of the weekend.. Kuemper is the future..

Thankfully hockey is played with a puck.

[Zorro]

Thankfully hockey is played with a puck.

Not when your so bad a beachball can fit in your net..HaHa

[VincentVega]

Doooooooobie will drop the ball again by the end of the weekend.. Kuemper is the future..

Kuemper is the future but he sucks in the present.

[Zorro]

Kuemper is the future but he sucks in the present.

Sucks?? Or he has been playing hurt all year??

The team infront of him hasn't played to well either..

[VincentVega]

Sucks?? Or he has been playing hurt all year??

The team infront of him hasn't played to well either..

Don't know about him playing hurt all year. But statistically Kuemper is one of the worst starters in the league this year (2nd to Smith only, I believe).

[Jordyr77]

I was a believer in the Wild to start off the season, I'm still shocked at how low they are in the standings.

An "elite" top 6 by name, very serviceable depth (a la Zccker, Haula, El Nino) and even a solid 4th line/PKers in Fontaine, Brodziak, and the like.
A stud Dman in Suter, a very responsible Brodin, up&coming Spurgeon, the break out of Scandella.

Other than an anemic PP (that's Yeo's fault, or whoever coordinates that), this team might be the rare instance of how goal tending really is/was the crux.

Yesterday's 7-0 rout of the Sabres by no means is a definitive projection of what games in the future will be like, but Dubnyk has at least managed to provide average goaltending for very terrible teams in the past. That, in addition with a lot of bouts with the fairly weak Albertan teams + Canucks in the upcoming schedule, should yield some good results for both Dubnyk and the Wild moving forward.

I wouldn't say the Flames are "fairly weak". If they beat San Jose they'll be 2 points behind them with a game in hand. Sitting in 9th isn't too shabby.

[LakeSoup]

I wouldn't say the Flames are "fairly weak". If they beat San Jose they'll be 2 points behind them with a game in hand. Sitting in 9th isn't too shabby.

Analytics have shown they've been riding puck luck pretty hard through the first half of the season.

Let's talk F depth:

JOHNNY GAUDREAU MIKAEL BACKLUND JIRI HUDLER
LANCE BOUMA SEAN MONAHAN DAVID JONES
MASON RAYMOND DREW SHORE JOE COLBORNE
BRANDON BOLLIG MATT STAJAN PAUL BYRON
- pulled from LWL

Very inexperienced 1st line. You really want to match up Gaudreau/Backlund vs the CALI 1st line beasts?
This second line is actually worse than Vancouver's, who has a pitiful 2nd line themselves (I would know as a VAN resident)
Bonino is further in development than Monahan is, Higgins>Jones, and who the fk is Bouma?
Shore as the 3rd line C? Joke.

Although I will acquit that their G and top 4D corps is greatly improved since last year (Brodie has been REALLY impressive, and Russell is super underrated), they're pretty reliant on Gio/Hudler/Gaudreau coming through. The D can't make up for the F for the whole season when teams are going to grind these guys down. It concerns me when a team's leading point-getter is a Dman in addition to 3rd place being a rookie.

Next, it's the second half of the season that really shows a team's tenacity and belief in their system.

1. By this time, teams that have been pretty lucky start regressing to the mean (ex. Toronto) and teams are able to adept better to one another.
Although one might suggest that all teams will know more about each other and as such, this will not impact play, the Flames team this year is pretty significantly different from last year. This means that likely other teams would not have had a very big sample size to pull relevant data from in determining the best way to match up against the Flames early on.

2. Flames got most of their points in the very beginning of the season, when they can advantage of teams that are:
- "trying out" players (the 9 max GP with rookies and the such)
- teams with key injuries
- teams that have not been able to build chemistry among their players yet due to lack of time

By now, all these things should be addressed and no longer a problem for other teams.

Let's look at their schedule:

OCT: 12GP 6W 2OTL = 14pts out of a possible 24 (58% conversion rate)
NOV: 13GP 9W = 18 pts out of a possible 26 (69%)
DEC: 14GP 6W 1OTL = 13 pts out of a possible 28 (46%)
JAN: 6GP 3W (50%)

I suspect that their conversion rate will be ~50% moving forward, which I agree isn't terrible. But relative to the teams in their conference (NSH, STL CHI, WPG, COL, DAL), Calgary is very preferable to face, and thus "fairly weak."

Overall, Flames are trending upward since last year for sure, and their retool to the top shouldn't take too long (I think they'll be truly good in 2 years) but the lack of veteran experience and proven 2way C in their top 6 will really hurt them. The drop from the standings won't be too severe, but it will be there. Won't make playoffs for sure.