The Petey Predicament

[Tciso]

You could write a song.

An epic tragedy in the style of Gordon Lightfoot?

[donlever]

More like Toby Keith.

To the tune of "I Love This Bar" by Toby Keith - Special writing cred to Donny for a couple tweaks

We got Cornuck, we got Lever
Chef, Blobcat, and Reefer
And we got Horseman, and Nukertuzzi
BoS and Bersnoozi
And we can always count on Rats to call the score (4-3 Canucks of course)
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

We got Saint, and MCP
Dangler, RG, and Cookie
And we got Cuz, the twin harpooner
Megs and Carl, th’ old schooners
And there’s Mëds, Theman, and sometimes DBR
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

I love this board
It’s my kind of place
Just walk in through the front door
You’ll find the finest rePERbates
It’s ain’t too far
Come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

We’ve seen Expats, we’ve got Lancer
We’ve seen Widow’s would-be romancers
And we got Tciso, we got Topper
We’ve even seen a Jello-Puddin-Popper
And we come to Cherry our team in one accord
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

(Now) We’ve lost our share, to the Reaper
Here’s to, Eddie, SKYO, and Creeper
Let’s raise a tall one, to old Rumsfeld
And salute to Doc Strangelove
Their names forever on this forum here record
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

I like our team
I like this city (most of it anyways)
I like to get a breath of fresh air
I like the real world now and then
But I love this board
It’s my kind of place
There’s nothing like a forum
Packed full of reprobates
No cover charge (but donate please)
Come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this board

[Carl Yagro]

An epic tragedy in the style of Gordon Lightfoot?

The obvious remake would be The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Maybe another appropriate one would be Warren Zevon's Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. Always loved the story telling in that song.

[donlever]

The site it lives on from Cornuck on down
For the failure they call Canucks Hockey
The Frank, it is said, never gives up though dead
When the skies of the season turn gloomy
With a lame looking core, 11 point 6 millions more
Than 55 sad seasons weighed empty
That good CC crew had many bones could be chewed
When team failures again showed up early

[Ronning's Ghost]

The site it lives on from Cornuck on down
For the failure they call Canucks Hockey
The Frank, it is said, never gives up though dead
When the skies of the season turn gloomy
With a lame looking core, 11 point 6 millions more
Than 55 sad seasons weighed empty
That good CC crew had many bones could be chewed
When team failures again showed up early

That was really good !

[Cornuck]

Nice work Donnie, pretty much sums up the year....

[Topper]

As an aside

Tom Robbins noted that Lake Gitchegumee was named for an infamous native American premature ejaculator.

[Cousin Strawberry]

[donlever]

It’s great for their teams and fanbases that 3 guys are vastly underpaid and 1 one is providing incredible surplus value on an ELC (but he will get his bag big time). All 4 of these guys are easily worth anywhere north of 18 mill in today’s market, if Kaprizov’s new deal is the standard.

Their December numbers extrapolated over a full season is somewhere between 130-200 points. These are numbers only produced by generational players, which all of them are. Nobody once ever used that word on Petey and most in the market were OK with that even when he signed his 11.6, as long as he lived up to his expected production as a top line center producing in the 80-100 range.

He clearly hasn’t. He’s underperformed and extremely disappointing, no question, but stacking Petey up against these guys is excessive.

Yep...he's not them.

For sure.

He and his agent sold themselves to be as much unfortunately.

Demanding a bigger ticket than Nylander when he is not the better player.

He glossed himself as a top player in the league via his contract demands.....92 million fucking dollars for this clown??!!.....thats worse than the God damned Luongo contract ffs....(unfortunately our moronic power broker team bought in hook, line and sinker).

Now, as his glitter continues to corrode...lo and behold he gets to be compared to the top player group he fancied himself a part of.

We Canuck fans can yeahbut until Kingdom come.

But it is what it is.

He is not, was not and will not.

You reap what you sew Elias.

[Nuckertuzzi]

Demanding a bigger ticket than Nylander when he is not the better player.

See, that's all you had to do. No argument here.

[Meds]

Fuck that guy and the reindeer drawn Volvo he rode in on.

[JelloPuddingPop]

Demanding a bigger ticket than Nylander when he is not the better player.

See, that's all you had to do. No argument here.

Not to defend a player who clearly can play better - but doesn't have the heart, head or cojones (or all three) to do so:

I'll disagree with the "fault" being with the employee in this case. I've interviewed many candidates for positions in which they deemed themselves more than qualified, and demanded a salary that met their expectations. Having hired them, realized they were completely out of their depth and had to let them go - isn't on them. Its on me.

Getting what you can, while you can is the nature of a lot of individuals. Can't really blame them.

As has been discussed throughly, this is on Mgmt. And for continuing to not deal with the situation. Trade him. Hire a nanny to babysit him, or a headshrink to lobotomize him. Do something. Just not this year or next as we tank.

[Carl Yagro]

Not just Nylander, but also Marner, who has been over PPG every year since 2018.

Then there's the 1C comparison with Sebastian Aho, who is not PPG and has never broken 90pts in a season, but he has lead his team to the playoffs for seven consecutive years and is going for eight.

If you think you da man and you demand the compensation of being one of da men in the league, you cannot be producing like the antithesis of da man while the team under your leadership is continuously in the bottom half of the standings.

EDIT: ^Agree with many of JPP's points. Ultimately, it's up to the mgmt, current or new, to extract themselves from this predicament, whatever that might be... sooner or later.

[Meds]

He (and his agent) put himself in a camp with McDavid, Matthews, MacKinnon.....with the game breakers, the guys who carry their team night in and night out. When you look at the seasons those players had prior to signing their big contract, there was a progression that Pettersson lacked. There were accomplishments that he lacked. Those players had attributes that he lacked. Giving him the contract was the fault of management, the collapse of the player is the fault of the player.

But it was more than that.....right from the beginning there was clearly something "off" between his ears. His personality sucked, his focus was on "his brand". Matthews might fit that bill, but other guys in that class of player certainly did not. Their focus was winning, it was on the success of the team, it was on preparation and leadership. His never was. Again, the offering the contract was the fault of management. But the play bears responsibility for not living up to it.

The Aho comparison is a good one. Note that Aho signed for $1.9M less a year before. The team he's on? 8 years running in the playoffs, considered to be a contender for at least half of those.

JPP's analogy regarding employees that he has hired.....fair point, but incomplete. You can pay said employee severance and lay them off or fire them. Their "contract" is not guaranteed regardless of performance. And once you fire them, even if you had to pay hefty severance package, their "wage" doesn't count against your ability to replace them (unless of course you can't afford to, but that is economics, not a limitation placed upon you by an organization that prohibits you from spending what you (possibly) have.

[Topper]

I recently did a deeper dive into Scooter's stats. Previously I've looked at his performance and charted his multi-point game performance month by month, his decline was clear long before his extension was signed.

This time I looked at his career game by game log and one thing that stands out is how inconsistent he is. I looked at trailing averages of point/gm and StdDev over 10 and 5 game windows as well as season by season. He also tapers off from the midpoint of the season in all but his best year. His peak performance was over 1.5 seasons, That's it.

You could see a peak (it was a very broad shallow curve) in performance 48 games before his contract extension was signed. I wanted to see if he was a 60pt - 80pt a season $8M - $8.5M a year guy or a 100pt - 130pt a season $10M - $12M guy. It always struck me as odd that he was invisible in the play so many nights, but often appeared on the score sheet at the end of the night.

In the 48 games before that peak, he had 8 games with 0pts. He had scoring streaks (3gm or more) of 3, 5, 3, 13, 3, 8 games.
In the 48 games between that peak and contract extension, he had 20 games with 0 pts and he had scoring streaks (3gm or more) of 3, 4, and 3 games.

That 4 games point streak was the infamous NY-NJ-Pit road trip, 12pts in four games. More than 10% of his season's points came in those four games when Tocchet briefly reunited the Lotto Line for the first time in his tenure.

From the numbers, the signs were there that he wasn't a 100+ per season point guy and his career game in game out inconsistency was a huge red flag. Add to that the visual test of watching him play. Every off season the question was always the same, will he step up and drive play? He never has.

My kid was watching the other night and as I walked through the room I heard Shortie say something about Scooter having points in 18 of his 39 games this season. Jesus Christ ..... Superstar.

So the question is, should management have known and played hardball on his salary? Was The Carolina trade offer real and turned down?

I'd say that while the taper off in point production was subtle in the broad curve, the inconsistency was real throughout his career and only getting worse. Add in the visuals of watching his play, skate and commitment to training, there was no reason for management to give him the contract he signed.

Unless ..... the public and media outcry over the dropping of such a popular player with an inflated public persona was unbearable to ownership/management after how the public/media outcry had forced their hands on the previous regime.

How much does public/media pressure play in hockey talent evaluation with this ownership group?

A year ago we learned Brock wasn't traded because the offers would publicly embarrass management. Appears the public/media over valued what the auction market value was and public/media perception won the day.