u/MarshalL-NDavoutStan

I know this is a bold take but hear me out:

First, I will give him his flowers:
-Brassard for Zibanejad was an S tier trade
-the Rick Nash trade was excellent, it gave us Ryan Spooner who turned into Ryan Strome, Ryan Lindgren and a pick which we flipped to draft K'Andre Miller.
-acquiring Fox and Panarin, tho I give him little credit for that as the two only wanted to play in NYR.

Now, the bad stuff. This will take a while.

• the Brendan Smith contract was atrocious from the get go. Smith was ideally a number 5 defensman and in the 2017 cap reality he gave him over 4M per year for 4 years??
• I just mentioned it in another post but that JT Miller/Ryan McDonagh trade is one of the worst trades I have ever seen. Period. Miller was then in his mid 20s and McDonagh was in his late 20s. Such a package should've given us a package which started with Cirelli. Again, "started with", meaning Cirelli++, like Cirelli, a 1st, a 2nd and a 3rd, easily.
• that Pionk plus 1st for Trouba trade sucked from the moment it was made. Pionk is a year younger than Trouba, why was there the need to add a first round pick??? And then to add insult to injury, that 8X8 Trouba contract in the 2019 cap reality was atrocious, easily a 1,5M overpay. A better contract would've been 6,5X6.
• extending Kreider to that contract was a big mistake too. 6,5M over 7 years for a power forward in his late 20s was a mistake. Apart from his 21-22, 22-23 and 23-24 seasons, Kreider has always been and will always be a streaky player. In 19-20, before the trade deadline, Kreider was in one of his hot streaks and he should've been moved for futures. By 24-25 everyone saw the decline and yes he started hot in 25-26 in ANA but got cold and his back 2/3rds of the season was decent at best.
• didn't leave the team with a long term, young 1C. By the time we made the playoffs, in 21-22, Zibanejad was already 28.
• those 2017 and 18 drafts were a disaster. 5 firsts only one of them really panned out (K'Andre Miller). Andersson and Kravstov were complete busts (at least the 2nd we got from LAK for Andersson turned into Cuylle), Chytil has just had the worst injury luck I've ever seen maybe besides DiPietro and Lundkvist, while a regular NHLer, is still a disappointment. Sandin was picked right after and was always seen as the superior prospect. Andersson was a reach when he was picked IIRC. Others like Necas, Suzuki(would've been the young 1C I was just talking about), Vilardi or Tippett were available.
• why trade a 2nd to dump Staal in 2020 if you're not going to do anything with the cap space?? We had 1-2 years before young guys like Kakko, Chytil, Fox, Lindgren, Shesterkin, Miller and more were going to command huge pay raises, guys like Borowiecki, Perry, Granlund, just to name a few, would've been fits for us in 2020. So trading that 2nd was useless if you're not going to do anything with the extra cap space

So I'm sorry, and I know this is unpopular, but I don't see why Gorton is so often praised so highly by people. Extremely underwhelming tenure as Rangers GM IMO. Maybe he's better as President of Hockey Ops...

Oh and btw, this doesn't mean I am a Drury fanboy. The Buchnevich trade, Goodrow contract, Panarin trade, just to name those, are complete disasters.

My pick goes to Ryan McDonagh. Granted, he's aging and is entering the final 3-4 years of his career, but, for most if not all of his career he's been mad underrated.

The NYR traded him in 2018, they never replaced him. And I say this as a NYR fan. That McDonagh+Miller trade to TB is in the bottom 10 worst trades I've ever seen. Not quite Forsberg/Erat bad but it's horrendous.

Tampa won 2 Cups and went to 3 straight finals with him, they basically gave him away to NSH in a cap dump move and immediately regressed defensively, while NSH improved.

And two years later, when NSH traded McDonagh back to TB they immediately regressed on the defense side of things while TB immediately improved.

As a NYR fan I desperately wanted the team to bring him back in 2024. Trouba had been a disaster for us in these playoffs and we needed someone like McDonagh so bad.

So McDonagh is my pick.

Who do you guys pick?

This may be an unpopular opinion but I don't like the moves WSH has been making so far this summer.

I know the cap is exploding but Tuch is massively overpaid, he's 30 and didn't even have 70pts last season, he's overpaid by 2,5M IMO.

I may be underestimating Kyrou but I think the Kyrou trade is an overpay. Kyrou is 28 while McMichael's 25. Kyrou is 36G, 70pts and 18G, 46pts seasons while McMichael is coming off seasons of 26g and 57pts and 14g and 46pts. Plus WSH added a first rounder and a good prospect. I really like this for STL and don't like this for WSH.

I simply don't get why they're adding so many wingers. They've resigned Ovi, they have the Protas brothers, Kyrou, Tuch, Leonard, Miroshnichenko, Wilson.

IMO they're just blocking the developments of their younger wingers.

Desharnais is a massive overpay. Again, I know the cap is going up bjg time, but over 4M per for Desharnais who, to me, is a number 6 on a contending team, is insane. Plus they already had Chychrun, Sandin, Roy, Fehervary, Hutson and Liljegren back there, meaning you now have 7D, who goes?.

Edit: I think Strome, Dubois, Jenner and Sourdif isn't a strong enough C depth to win a cup.

Hey, I’ve been listening to more and more orchestral music this past year and would like a few tips on how to spot instruments:

-after a while, I finally managed to spot the violas in John Williams scores but I have more trouble when it comes to other composers I like a lot, like Dvorak, Holst, Tchaikovsky or Beethoven. Does anyone have a tip for me?

-is there a way to easily hear the tuba?