Bob Duff: Hronek Takes Promising Steps At Worlds Playing for the Czech Republic, Detroit Red Wings defenseman Filip Hronek was named the top defenseman at the world championship.

Hey, HB

Fire this hack. Please bring back Mark.

Thanks,

Signed: Everyone.

That draft set us back a couple years! Minimum. Wow terribly bad

Great copy and paste by Duff. Maybe to make it interesting, why not challenge Blashill's nonsense about how rare young d-men are. And what does he mean it took Giordano 12 years to become Giordano? He didn't suddenly become a star in his 30's. He's been a very effective player for a very long time.

How about a comment on another international failure by Blashill?

Or how our 2017 draft might have been the worst draft by any team in a very, very long time. Holland was given kudos for stockpiling picks and then we wasted them on a bunch of low-skill character guys that you can sign every summer for free. I called it on draft day. But was lectured about how I'm not a pro scout so what do you know. Haha.

Let's challenge Blashill on that "defensemen aren't super young" comment, shall we?

I used Hockey-Reference to identify the top 93 NHL defensemen in terms of total time on ice last season. Since there are 31 teams in the NHL, this would roughly correspond to a "top 3" defender.

By age they are sorted thusly:

18: 1 player
19: 1 player
20: 1 player
21: 1 player
22: 6 players
23: 3 players
24: 15 players
25: 9 players
26: 6 players
27: 8 players
28: 11 players
29: 7 players
30: 1 player
31: 7 players
32: 5 players
33: 3 players
34: 1 player
35: 3 players
36: 2 players
37: 1 player
38: 1 player (Hi, Kronwall!)

To simplify that into buckets:
18-22: 10 players
23-27: 41 players
28-32: 31 players
33-37: 9 players
38+: Kronwall

Or in other words, defenseman probably peak a little later than forwards but it's still a young man's game. Average age overall is 27, the average age for an "elite" defenseman is probably around the same.

Hronek turns 22 this fall so he's still very much on the young side for an upper-tier NHL defenseman. But his age is definitely not a good reason to bring him along slowly.

Listening to Blashill... who does he sound like ?? Ken Holland.

The veteran loving, out of touch, NHL Has passed him bye GM who made a complete mess of this team. Thank Goodness Holland is now gone. Now if Stevie can only get rid of a few horrible contracts (i.e. Abdlekader, DeKeyser, Neilson, etc..).

I'd be fine with a buyout of at least one of those in June... my pick would be Abdelkader at this point.