Pick 'Em: Jurcina Or Erskine?

He will also throw some fists, and spear Flyers if needed (or not). Juice has one pre-season fight under his belt.

I agree that the nature of the mistakes is key in this case. Jurcina makes mental errors; Erskine generally only makes mistakes when overwhelmed. See to it that Erskine doesn’t play against top notch opponents, and he’s fine.

Plus, he can kill penalties an area the team hasn’t been good in but finds themselves in a lot.

This is very difficult. For a while Alzner made Jurcina look like a viable defenseman.

When Erskine came back from an injury he was a beast for a game, possibly a game and a half.

I guess I’d rather see Erskine play because he’s going to be here for two more years and he’s the one worth investing in.

Juice has a much better shot and can play pretty well when paired with the right person.

Like Alzner on the first recall (cough).

If I don’t get that guy, I go Erskine.

…having to pick either Miller Lite or Bud Light as your beverage of choice.

a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

choosing your husband in prison.

…a dream come true for those of us who remember the days when three of the top four ice time guys were Josef Boumedienne, Joel Kwiatkowski, and Jason Doig.

(note: only applies when choosing who’s the sixth d-man and who sits)

a scene from the movie “Saw”

…asking whether you want horsecrap or cowpies in your sh*t sandwich.

I feel ya brotha man, I feel ya.

that easy for you huh?

I’ll take Katie every time.

Good points, all.

Kinda funny that Juice is the one that needs to play a lot to play well. I feel like Erskine (and Pothier when healthy) need to be sat every few games just to get their heads and/or legs right.

LOL – from now on #55 shall be referred to as ‘Beaker’.

I disagree, that means Nyls gets a sweater…

I thought for sure this would be closer than it is… Juice is running away with it.

I don’t have a Jack Adams trophy, but I (along with other caps fans) often wonder if constantly shuffling lines negatively affects offense as well.

Juice will turn 26 this year. Defensemen generally take longer to mature, and given Juice’s skills and body, it wouldn’t surprise me if his curve is longer than most. The best thing for Jurcina’s development would probably be to move to a team where he plays a solid 20 every night. Were that to happen, I think he’d become a very solid #3/4 when he hits his “prime” in two or three seasons.

I’m not sure the Caps are going to give him that opportunity. And it goes without saying that the Caps can do better with Green, Alzner, Carlson, etc. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Jurcina as a hockey player that a couple more years in the league won’t solve.

That said, the Caps are better with Green/Poti/Schultz/Pothier/Mo as their top 5 than they are with Juice in that mix. I hope they have the luxury of benching Juice in the playoffs.

I’m not sure it’s the minutes per se that make Juice better. Aside from the obvious (you get more minutes when you are playing well) Juice’s best games as a Cap (aside from the initial 4 months when he had something to prove) have come when he has played with other guys that could a) handle pressure, b) move the puck, and c) handle 20 minutes a night. He was good when he played with Federov early in the year, and he was good when he played with Alzner in the middle of the year. He is not very consistent right now but his upside is way higher than Erskine’s. Does anyone know who has more puck-over-the-glass PIMs this year?

Because you realize that there’s no way we’ll ever get out of the first round of the playoffs, that Schultz should go back to the minors, and we should trade everybody except Ovechkin and maybe Backstrom because everybody else just completely s*cks.

Oh, wait, nobody asked Tarik’s blog. …sorry.

On a great team, Erskine is a very valuable #7. I don’t think Juice has a role on a great team right now in his career.

I think Mo has hit his ceiling (2nd pairing D on his good nights, 3rd pairing on his bad ones), and agree with Gould that Juice needs a change of scenery. We’re just not in the business of project defensemen anymore, which is a good thing. Juice may or may not become a good NHL player someday. We just have the luxury of not having to be the laboratory for this experiment any longer.

Schultz will be fine. He’s 23 and is playing a lot of minutes. He’ll make mistakes, but his positives far outweigh his negatives. Plus he’s cheap.

As bad as that was nothing beats Biron-Doig. I still wake up in a sweat from those nightmares.

What’s lamer: being on Facebook, or spending time on Facebook to rally around Jeff Schultz sucking?

Penguins fans have their group about how Brashear should change his number because 87 belongs to Crosby, Capitals fans have Jeff Schultz Sucks.

To each their own.

quadrupling from 1 member to 4 doesn’t register in my book…

I’m not quite sure how our 2nd line center disappearing makes us better though?
Ovi-Backs-Koz
Semin-Laich-???
Flash-Stecks-Fehr

Or switch out Koz and Laich?

and ??? <> Nylander,Clark

Green and Feds scares the hell out of me on the backline. They both have the same offensive instincts, which is to say they don’t have complimentary mindsets, and will no doubt give up far too many odd-man rushes.

That’s a pretty bad idea. No one else other than him and Backstrom have been even decent at playing making at center. He also wins a lot of faceoffs.
Feds on the second line with Semin and Laich is an awesome line in my opinion.

We just need the guys that we have to step up and play like they can.

A) I doubt Feds returns next year because he is old(er) and GMGM won’t be able to afford 4 mill. for him and B) I don’t think Schultz/Shamo could ever get the puck out of their own zone.

That lineup brings back wonderful memories. I’d take that blueline group and substitute another old-time Cap who is an associate coach in Montreal for Steckel and I’d like our odds to win the Cup.

I think Collins was the best of the Hershey players called up (other than Alzner) but I also think he isn’t any better defensively than Erskine or Jurcina and doesn’t have the grit of Erskine nor as much offensive talent as Jurcina.

How many of those would change if he fought someone every game? I bet about half (Bringing totals to 65-35). The fact that he doesn’t, but could, likely brings down his value in a lot of peoples eyes. I think Jurcina though is about 70% of an NHL defenseman.

I’ve got to be honest – Juice at 70% is utterly shocking to me. Must be those attack ads he ran against Ersky.

Maybe he started a rumor that Erskine is a secret Muslim.

what happens when much of your defensive corps doesn’t seem to be up for the challenge?

Then you ought to get players who are. This is why so many of us are excited about Alzner and Carlson. They seem a perfect fit to the Caps’ system.

There’s no doubt that systems can kill a guy’s effectiveness (Michael Nylander is probably Exhibits A, B, and C of that) but I don’t think that’s what is happening here. The four guys you named are basically stay-at-home defensive defensemen which means it’s basically their job not to make mistakes. As a result I think it’s easy to think they’re never doing anything of note except when they’re making mistakes which isn’t the case.

But I also think people overrated to slumps and hot steaks. For example, Schulz is getting a lot less love now than he was when he scored four goals in seven games last year while Morrisonn is taking a lot less flak now than he was in November and December.

We’re fans who hang on every game and whatnot, so any given day is just a snapshot, and we try to see the big picture, but it’s inevitably colored by the here and now.

Does Tomas Fleischmann suck? Well, he might. He has lately. But he didn’t in early January. So which is the real Flash? Who the hell knows? All we can do is react to what we’re presented, no?

I think that this is an interesting point. As DMG says, these guys are stay at home defensemen.

Here’s a theory. An issue for both the offense and defense is that they get caught watching… their teammates. Ovi is such a force, Semin, Green, Backstrom, even Flash do things that are so amazing, and make it look so easy, that the “other” guys on the ice and on the bench are as awed by their abilities as we are.

When they are skating with “the guys” they watch them rather than the noticing the opponent sneaking behind them. They try and carry the puck across the blueline (offensive and defensive) rather than dumping it.

A lot of that has to be youth and inexperience, some of that will be the system putting them in bad positions. I expect that as these guys become used to being the hunted rather than the hunter, and they become aware that because Backstrom can lift a pass from point to point over a stick doesn’t mean that they can, a lot of the things that we are complaining about an noticing go away.

I’m not how much stake I put in this, it might apply to some and not others, but I’d be interested to hear what you guys think about it.

What you’ve done is take selected information and aggregate it, even though it often comes from different people, and tried to present it like someone was making one argument and that’s not the case. For example:

Jurcina makes mental mistakes, but Erskine doesn’t make mistakes if managed properly. So, Jurcina’s mistakes are of his own doing, but Erskine’s mistakes are of the coaches’ doing.

Yes, anecdotally I find this to be the case. Erskine makes mistakes when he is pressured and mishandles the puck or shoots it over the glass whereas Jurcina tries to make passes he’s not capable of making and turns it over.

Jurcina makes mental mistakes, but Erskine only makes mistake when overwhelmed. Presumably, when he is physically overwhelmed, not mentally. Is that because he has a superior intellect or no discernible one?

I believe it’s because Erskine is very, very aware of his limitations and plays within them, while Jurcina is not.

Erskine, when rested, can perform like a beast for nearly two whole consecutive games. Jurcina plays better the more he plays. Good thing the Redskins only play 16 games a year.

Again, that was different people, who have different opinions.

The young defenseman on the roster suck and are not maturing rapidly enough. G_d, I can’t wait to see Alzner, Godfrey, and Carlson on the team next year.

No one mentioned Godfrey until you. The discussion on Carlson was generally about him being up in two or three years, not next year. Alzner has already been up with the team and I’d be shocked if he didn’t play at least 50 games with them next year.

Erskine is no better than a #6 defenseman, but Jurcina isn’t good enough to be a #5 defenseman. Yes, but what if Jurcina is the #6 defenseman, and Erskine is the #5 defenseman? You do the math.

I think the argument there is that Erskine can be solid sixth defenseman and Jurcina can’t. Ergo, if you were to pick one, it’d be Erskine.

We interrupt this program for an important announcement: Schultz sucks, Morrisonn sucks, Schultz sucks.

One person said Schultz sucked and was immediately countered. Some people may have said that about Morrisonn, but it’s not as if the discussion was derailed by it.

Erskine has better even-strength goals against per 60mins played than Jurcina, but Jurcina has better net numbers. I haven’t had time to check the rule book yet, but off the top of my head, I think the net number might be more important.

The net difference is +.25 for Jurcina and +.21 for Erskine. That .04 difference means that the team is better to the tune of .04 goals every sixty minutes, which means the team is one goals better off every twenty-five hours or 1,500 minutes. In short, it’s negligible, especially given that to play 1,500 minutes over an NHL season you have to average ~18:18 a night, which no sixth defenseman does. So, over the course of the whole season, that difference probably doesn’t come into play.

Jurcina takes fewer penalties per minutes played, scores more, has a higher Corsi, has played against better competition and with weaker teammates.

Jurcina takes fewer penalties as a whole but takes 36% more HHT penalties and 27% more restraining fouls. If we’re talking bigger sample sizes, Jurcina has four goals in his last 2,295 minutes (this season and last), or .001743 goals per minute. Erskine has two goals in 1,430 minutes in that stretch, or .001340 goals per minutes. At that rate, assuming 1,500 minutes a year, Jurcina scores one more goal than Erskine every two seasons.

I should have voted for Erskine. He hits. I can’t stand defenseman that don’t hit, particularly tall defenseman that, well, that just LOOK like they should be hitting people. Hits are what matter. You can’t stop NHL forwards unless you hit them, particularly as most of them just stand there and let you do it. So, go out there and hit somebody, tall man.

No one said Jurcina doesn’t hit, in fact it was said more than once that both players hit. If Erskine is the better hitter, that’s a mark in his favor, just like the fact that Ovechkin hits is part of what makes him the best player in the league.

Fighting is good, particularly if you are a defenseman. Don’t worry about sitting out for 5 minutes at a time and the toll that might take on your 5 defensive partners, just go punch somebody’s lights out. Don Cherry may even give you a shout out.

Given that Erskine has one fight this year and it came in the season’s first game, I don’t think that’s a concern.

What?

Jurcina has only looked good because of Alzner. Is it possible that is because Alzner is not Erskine?

Erskine has better even-strength goals against per 60mins played than Jurcina, but Jurcina has better net numbers. I haven’t had time to check the rule book yet, but off the top of my head, I think the net number might be more important. Jurcina takes fewer penalties per minutes played, scores more, has a higher Corsi, has played against better competition and with weaker teammates.

This is why I voted for Juice.

There is no level of minutiae to, um, minute for fans to argue over.

End of line. No games for two days + frustration = fans debating minutiae.

I went out last night and discovered that there is, indeed, life after hockey. Somehow. :)

I currently am.