Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Detroit's Top Trio

12/10/2019 at 9:06am EST

from Craig Custance of The Athletic,

It’s a concept that was coined by former Los Angeles GM Dean Lombardi when the Kings were at the peak of their power during the middle of the last decade. He called the trio of Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick the Kings’ microcore. The theory was pretty simple: Teams that build around high-end players at those three positions – No. 1 center, No. 1 defenseman and goaltender – should be in pretty darn good position to challenge for a Stanley Cup....

To get a sense of how each NHL team’s microcore stacks up, each team’s microcore was identified and presented to a panel from inside the hockey world to rate each one on a scale of 1-100. To provide an analytics balance, we added in ratings from The Athletic‘s Dom Luszczyszyn as part of the average.

Here was the breakdown of the panel: Two NHL executives, two NHL scouts and an NHL coach, plus Dom....

Tampa is rated first with Brayden Point, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy with an average rating of 90.9.

Detroit is ranked 30th with Dylan Larkin, Filip Hronek and Jimmy Howard and their rating is 63.9

It’s been a tough season in Detroit but this exercise is another example of just how badly the franchise needs high-end talent at key positions. The pain right now is necessary for a team that needs a couple more top picks in the system. “I like (Dylan) Larkin. He’d be a really good No. 2 center. Maybe a No. 1 winger,” suggested one executive. “(Filip) Hronek is more of a prospect. And you wouldn’t want to be a goalie in Detroit right now.”

“Hronek is their No. 1 D?” Asked one panelist. “That’s a tough depth chart. But I have always liked Hronek because of his compete.”

the rest of the teams ($$$)...

added 9:14am, Yesterday The Hockey News wanted to know if the Wings are the worst NHL of the salary cap era. Watch below.

Detroit talk starts at the 7:58 mark.

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