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The Official Post-Bitch 2025-26 Regular Season Thread

Strome scores but Schmaltz is an analytics darling. He's a legit 1C that plays tough minutes.

Ehhh, he's spent most of his career on the wing though. Yeah, he's been a 1C this year and did well, but he's been hit at miss at C in the past. Strome has been a good 2C for almost every year of his career.
 
Thing is, even if you concede the point that Schmaltz is a better player than Strome, you still come back around to the original point—which is that the biggest singular “win” of Chayka’s trading career is a debatable swap of two similar-impact players.
 
Also hayton wasn’t a good pick because of Hughes but zadina, boqvist and kravtsov were. 6 8 and 9 and haytons been a 20 g nhl centre which is not what you want at 5th ov but you can do a lot worse.

Sure...but Hughes and Bouchard both put up pretty historic pre draft seasons in their leagues. Bouchard was a 6'3 RHD who had just put up an 18 yr old OHL season better than John Carlson, Al MacInnis, Matthew Schneider, and in line with Larry Murphy & Paul Coffey. The only OHL defenders who had put up better offensive totals at the same age were Maga DeAngelo, and Dougie the Museum Afficionado. Boqvist, taken before him, put up way more pedestrian numbers in the same league. Quinn Hughes closest statistical comparison in the NCAA pre draft was Werenski...and they were head and shoulders better than anyone else who followed that dev path before them.

Hayton was young for the level so that needs to be taken into account, but his NHL comps based on that draft season were guys like Richard Rakell, Pavel Zacha, Trochek, Horvat, Kadri, Ryan O'Reilly...but along with those names are like 60 guys who never did much. sub PPG in your draft season isn't exactly rarified air in the OHL. It was crazy for an "analytics guy" to leave Quinn Hughes and Bouchard on the board and pick Hayton.
 
I will say that Jason Demers was a nerdies darling and at the time of the trade for mcginn, nerds went nuts calling Chayka a genius. Just fyi.
 
Thing is, even if you concede the point that Schmaltz is a better player than Strome, you still come back around to the original point—which is that the biggest singular “win” of Chayka’s trading career is a debatable swap of two similar-impact players.

Yeah, that's all I'm saying really. Prefer Schmaltz if you want, fine. But Schmaltz at 5.8 million since a year after the trade vs Strome for 3.5 over the first few years of that and then 5.0 over the last few, is a wash at worst.
 
I will say that Jason Demers was a nerdies darling and at the time of the trade for mcginn, nerds went nuts calling Chayka a genius. Just fyi.

Cool, they got one year out of him before he got old and started falling apart.

I like my nerds when they find a 24-25 yr old that no one else likes, and that guy turns into a good player. Grabbing a 29 yr old already playing 19-20 minutes a night just doesn't hit the same.
 
Cool, they got one year out of him before he got old and started falling apart.

I like my nerds when they find a 24-25 yr old that no one else likes, and that guy turns into a good player. Grabbing a 29 yr old already playing 19-20 minutes a night just doesn't hit the same.
Yeah I'm good with that. Just saying it was probably one of his better, clearly analytic based swings. Like Dubas with the Muzzin trade, but this cost him almost nothing.
 
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