*** San Jose Sharks 2014 Off-Season Thread ***

Originally posted by mike:

Originally posted by OnTheClock:

I still want to keep Murray, honestly. Until we find a young guy ready to replace him among our 8-deep group, whether it's Doherty, Demelo, or whoever.. I think we need him around for that physical presence.

Vlasic-Burns
Murray-Boyle
Stewart-Braun/Demers

All those lines can get good PT. We would only need to add one more guy, probably an experienced player, or they could possibly look to a young rookie too.

Stuart not Stewart, confused me for a second there lol.

You don't need 8 experienced dmen you need 6 and then those prospects you mentioned can be perfectly fine to fill in for injuries as necessary. Plus we almost always get a cheap veteran 7th dman for occasional spot duty(in the past its been guys like leach, staubitz, ect). 7th dman is not a huge need and usually doesn't play serious minutes(if any, healthy scratch) unless there are injuries.

Stuart fills in the top 4 over Murray pretty much guaranteed. He's just a better overall defenseman. He's not as physical as Murray, but that's not a knock on Stuart he's plenty physical. Then you have Braun and Demers as a perfectly fine pairing. Add Murray into the bottom pair mix and you take time away from young guys like Demers and Braun who need every minute they can get to improve their own games. There also just aren't many fringe 6/7th dmen making 2.5 million a year.

Hockey players also don't have the ability to restructure contracts. I'd keep him if he was 1-1.5m a year which is what purely physical role players are paid.

Whoops, don't know what I was writing there. Total brain fart.

Anyways, I had been thinking and I can totally agree that if we want to put the top pairings, it would be:

Vlasic-Burns
Stuart-Boyle
Braun/Murray-Demers/Murray


I don't know what we're going to do with Murray, if anything, but it's hard for me to see this team without him. He's probably my favorite player. The guy has been a beast for us when it comes to being the guy to deliver a momentum changing hit, block a shot, or clear the crease. But it's hard for anyone to argue against the fact that he is a liability often times due to the lack of speed, and it really depends on the opponent when it comes to how effective Murray can be when he plays. He's a monster when we need to match up physically, but when we face a team built on speed that knows how to wear him down, he struggles.

Honestly, i don't think we would go wrong either way -- keeping him or shipping him off -- but if we let him go, I just hope we can get good compensation.

Originally posted by OnTheClock:

Originally posted by mike:

Originally posted by OnTheClock:
I still want to keep Murray, honestly. Until we find a young guy ready to replace him among our 8-deep group, whether it's Doherty, Demelo, or whoever.. I think we need him around for that physical presence.

Vlasic-Burns
Murray-Boyle
Stewart-Braun/Demers

All those lines can get good PT. We would only need to add one more guy, probably an experienced player, or they could possibly look to a young rookie too.

Stuart not Stewart, confused me for a second there lol.

You don't need 8 experienced dmen you need 6 and then those prospects you mentioned can be perfectly fine to fill in for injuries as necessary. Plus we almost always get a cheap veteran 7th dman for occasional spot duty(in the past its been guys like leach, staubitz, ect). 7th dman is not a huge need and usually doesn't play serious minutes(if any, healthy scratch) unless there are injuries.

Stuart fills in the top 4 over Murray pretty much guaranteed. He's just a better overall defenseman. He's not as physical as Murray, but that's not a knock on Stuart he's plenty physical. Then you have Braun and Demers as a perfectly fine pairing. Add Murray into the bottom pair mix and you take time away from young guys like Demers and Braun who need every minute they can get to improve their own games. There also just aren't many fringe 6/7th dmen making 2.5 million a year.

Hockey players also don't have the ability to restructure contracts. I'd keep him if he was 1-1.5m a year which is what purely physical role players are paid.

Whoops, don't know what I was writing there. Total brain fart.

Anyways, I had been thinking and I can totally agree that if we want to put the top pairings, it would be:

Vlasic-Burns
Stuart-Boyle
Braun/Murray-Demers/Murray


I don't know what we're going to do with Murray, if anything, but it's hard for me to see this team without him. He's probably my favorite player. The guy has been a beast for us when it comes to being the guy to deliver a momentum changing hit, block a shot, or clear the crease. But it's hard for anyone to argue against the fact that he is a liability often times due to the lack of speed, and it really depends on the opponent when it comes to how effective Murray can be when he plays. He's a monster when we need to match up physically, but when we face a team built on speed that knows how to wear him down, he struggles.

Honestly, i don't think we would go wrong either way -- keeping him or shipping him off -- but if we let him go, I just hope we can get good compensation.

You don't think Stuart would be on with Burns?

Originally posted by Garcia:
You don't think Stuart would be on with Burns?

He could be. Ultimately it's whatever works when we get these guys all playing together. Vlasic and Stuart are both solid defensive dmen. Stuart has an edge on vlasic as far as physicality goes though and I think that trait goes better with Boyle- who's less physical than Burns by a little bit(Burns definitely has the size advantage).

It's all about chemistry in the end though. Vlasic and Burns worked pretty well last year considering Burns was new to the team so that could work again just from an experience standpoint as well.

OTC- I agree on Murray being a beast and a fan favorite, I would be happy to see him here next year. A lot of his skating issues are exaggerated by the fact that he was playing big minutes against top players and just from personal observations he seemed to really slow down toward the end of games after all those longer shifts. It takes a lot of energy to move a guy that big lol. I really loved him in his original role as a 3rd pair guy who would just knock the opponents socks off from time to time, he didn't play as often but the opponent knew when he was on the ice.

I just wonder if the $2.5m contract is going to be hard to swallow once we have to sign Stuart to his $3-ish million contract(plus we aren't close to done with offseason deals yet who knows). I haven't done the math though, I'd like to see him stay but if Stuart is his upgrade and he's gone that's not a bad upgrade.

Originally posted by OnTheClock:
I still want to keep Murray, honestly. Until we find a young guy ready to replace him among our 8-deep group, whether it's Doherty, Demelo, or whoever.. I think we need him around for that physical presence.

Vlasic-Burns
Murray-Boyle
Stuart-Braun/Demers

All those lines can get good PT. We would only need to add one more guy, probably an experienced player, or they could possibly look to a young rookie too.

i love the hell out of murray and love his physical game, but the dude has lead feet and can't thread a good breakout pass to save his life. if you look at advanced stats like corsi and pdo, you'll see that they were protecting him a lot last year by starting him in the offensive zone more often than defensive, yet he still ended up with a horrible possession scoring. big part of that comes to comparing his average play when he goes back to retrieve the puck, he turned it over at the highest rate of any of our dmen and was unsuccessful at breaking out the majority of the time.

if we're giving top four minutes to a guy, he needs to be moving the puck much better than that. my favorite jersey is my black armor murray, but i gotta call it like it is.

Originally posted by drunk49er:

Originally posted by OnTheClock:

I still want to keep Murray, honestly. Until we find a young guy ready to replace him among our 8-deep group, whether it's Doherty, Demelo, or whoever.. I think we need him around for that physical presence.

Vlasic-Burns
Murray-Boyle
Stuart-Braun/Demers

All those lines can get good PT. We would only need to add one more guy, probably an experienced player, or they could possibly look to a young rookie too.

i love the hell out of murray and love his physical game, but the dude has lead feet and can't thread a good breakout pass to save his life. if you look at advanced stats like corsi and pdo, you'll see that they were protecting him a lot last year by starting him in the offensive zone more often than defensive, yet he still ended up with a horrible possession scoring. big part of that comes to comparing his average play when he goes back to retrieve the puck, he turned it over at the highest rate of any of our dmen and was unsuccessful at breaking out the majority of the time.

if we're giving top four minutes to a guy, he needs to be moving the puck much better than that. my favorite jersey is my black armor murray, but i gotta call it like it is.

Exactly, and that's what I agree with and just see my 2nd post about him and I think it's right along the same lines:

Originally posted by OnTheClock:

The guy has been a beast for us when it comes to being the guy to deliver a momentum changing hit, block a shot, or clear the crease. But it's hard for anyone to argue against the fact that he is a liability often times due to the lack of speed, and it really depends on the opponent when it comes to how effective Murray can be when he plays. He's a monster when we need to match up physically, but when we face a team built on speed that knows how to wear him down, he struggles.

zach praise might be a possibility in teal according to Hockey night in Canadia

no thanks. his production has been tailing off for the last few years. we need to get younger.

Originally posted by drunk49er:

no thanks. his production has been tailing off for the last few years. we need to get younger.

Yeah just don't know, we need to build for an established period of runs, and stop trying these boom our bust shot-in-the-dark chances.

Originally posted by drunk49er:
no thanks. his production has been tailing off for the last few years. we need to get younger.

Last few years Huh? You count the year he got injured there's not much he can do about that. He was 10 points off of his usual production this season but he had a pretty good stanley cup run. If we got him(27) and ditched one of the older guys we would get younger. But we don't really need to get younger, we need to get faster, and parise does that for us.

He's in his prime, you don't pass up on that just because he's going to be getting old in 5 years.

With that said, Parise is a big name free agent and the sharks simply NEVER get big names that way unless they have previous connections here or they want to live in california. We'll trade for someone big, if anything.

Originally posted by OnTheClock:
Yeah just don't know, we need to build for an established period of runs, and stop trying these boom our bust shot-in-the-dark chances.

too late for that though unless you're a proponent of the "fire sale" and rebuild. That won't happen for a few more years and coincides with lots of firings usually.

I say that's not possible because no one trades young established talent for veterans(which is mostly all that we have). Although sometimes they do trade somewhat-young(like 22-24) guys for picks and top prospects like the kessel trade. But that would mean trading couture for a prospect and whoever is supposed to be the top talent this year. The bruins were in an interesting situation where they had plenty of depth already and could afford to make that trade without worrying about the fact that it takes awhile for young guys to develop.

Originally posted by drunk49er:
no thanks. his production has been tailing off for the last few years. we need to get younger.

parise isnt old and even though his knee injury bothers me he brings what this team sorely needs and thats damn speed

on another topic, this is a good read

http://www.fearthefin.com/2012/6/14/3088267/could-douglas-murray-draw-interest-at-the-draft

I'd be down to trade murray for some speed.

Originally posted by mike:

too late for that though unless you're a proponent of the "fire sale" and rebuild. That won't happen for a few more years and coincides with lots of firings usually.

I say that's not possible because no one trades young established talent for veterans(which is mostly all that we have). Although sometimes they do trade somewhat-young(like 22-24) guys for picks and top prospects like the kessel trade. But that would mean trading couture for a prospect and whoever is supposed to be the top talent this year. The bruins were in an interesting situation where they had plenty of depth already and could afford to make that trade without worrying about the fact that it takes awhile for young guys to develop.

Not necessarily. The draft could be the most feasible possibility. We have a lot of young talent coming up soon. Never hurts to add to that.

we can remain competitive and stock up young talent, doug wilson just has to stop giving away all our draft picks for crappy useless players.