Hey Dobs, radulov!

[fzusher]

ultrawhiteness wrote:

good god fzusher, i hope you\'re a lawyer or politician or something. if i find out you\'re a bean counter or a plumber or something, i\'ll be pissed.

can\'t decide if i like your breakdown because it was well thought out or if i like it because it\'s good news, hah.

How about high-rise window cleaner? :P


:laugh: actually, you\'re close on both counts. I am a political science PhD student, with one year of law school in my dim and distant past ...

[Gordo]

Fzusher is Ovechkin\'s motherhmy:

My take on the Radulov drama is that we have a young kid/man that seems to be easily influenced. Who\'s the agent handling his best interest?? We have some mighty powerful organizations pawning him back and forth. I am now thinking that, yeah sure Rads has mad skills but geez, I don\'t know man, not too smart.

Oh and Mrs. Ovechkin, er, I mean Fzucher...keep up the amazing work.

[fantasyhockeygeek]

Eric Duhatschek at the Globe and Mail weighs in to clear up a bit of confusion here

He seems to think that Paul Kelly was talking about Rads coming back next year -- the 2009/2010 season.

[fzusher]

pooladdict wrote:

Eric Duhatschek at the Globe and Mail weighs in to clear up a bit of confusion here

He seems to think that Paul Kelly was talking about Rads coming back next year -- the 2009/2010 season.

Just got to reading this, and it is quite interesting and insightful. I highly recommend. The scenario of him only returning next year is one I didn\'t think about, and makes a lot of sense. The year\'s break could also help cool emotions within the teams and make a return to Nashville more palatable. This will, however, have to be worked out between the sides independently of arbitration and prior to the arbitration decision. This would cause me to revise the probabilities I gave earlier, and significantly reduce the 90% I gave to him coming back THIS YEAR.

[fzusher]

Revised scenarios and probabilities, again, just my personal opinion.

1a) Stays in Russia for the remainder of his KHL contract.

1b) Stays in Russia this year and then comes back to the NHL.

2) Comes back to Nashville this year of his own will and full of drive, all is forgiven him immediately by teammates and coaches, and he has the breakout year everyone expects he\'ll have.

3) Forced to come back this year by an arbitrator to a team where players and coaches don\'t really want him there, or want to teach him a lesson; at the same time, though he wants to come back to the NHL, the issues that drove him out of Nashville still remain, and are exacerbated by the above behavior. So he\'s forced to comeback to a team that doesn\'t want him and where he doesn\'t want to be either. This scenario then has three variants:

3a) He stays this year in Nashville and has a terrible season.

3b) He gets traded mid season and revives himself, or gets traded early to a team with similar issues (low aspirations/budget constraints, defensive system, smallish fan base) and has a decent, but by his standards middling, season.

3c) He gets traded during camp to a team that knows how to handle talent like him, and he explodes like we all expect him to.

Personally, i\'d give these scenarios these percentages:

1a - 5%
1b - 45%
2 - 5%
3a - 15%
3b - 20%
3c - 10%

So I am now giving it only a 50-50 chance he\'s in the NHL this year, and only a 15% chance he comes back and does well.

The reason for the big reduction is that now we know - which we didn\'t before - that Kelly\'s report of his desire to come back pertained to next year, not this year.

[fantasyhockeygeek]

Great analysis fzusher, karma.

I think Duhatschek is one of the better hockey journalists up there (up there with MacKenzie). 50-50 seems reasonable given all the info.

Nice work, keep going!