Chicago probably won't make the playoffs anyway but i wonder if they'd be interested in DA since they lost DeHaan and Seabrook, who may be out part of next year too.
No way the Rangers should trade Lias, terrible business decision since his value can only go up and future disgruntled players will do the same. SB Nation had an article echoing the sentiment that if you pick a guy 7th he should get treated with kid gloves and I agree with that. I believe every 1st rounder should play and be given adequate chance to fail, however we don't see what goes on off ice and more importantly during practice, that could be where the guy who's most famous for throwing his silver medal to the crowd may be hurting himself. Last year Lias couldn't stay out of the penalty box but I appreciated the effort and he definitely got under the skin of opponents. This year he didn't do shit with the minutes he was given, to put things in perspective when Gettinger was called up he played a better game statistically with only 4 minutes of ice time than lazy Lias has all year. My only hope for Lias is that he's being poorly advised by an agent and will grow up and come to his senses when he sees that he's not going anywhere.
Found this article on a recent interview with Andersson. I'm not really sure what to make of his situation/problems. Depression?Confidence? Problems with the Rangers coaches? Johan Rylander is the Frölunda Hockey beat writer for Gothenburgs daily paper ‘Göterborgs Posten’, and he got an exclusive interview with New York Rangers Lias Andersson after the Champions Hockey League semifinal on Tuesday night, you can find the full article here. It was a guarded but forthcoming Lias Anderson that spoke about his situation. “People can say it’s an idiotic decision in regards to my hockey career - but they don’t know the whole story” is the opening quote from Lias, who is wearing a pair of slippers as he cant fit his feet into a pair of shoes, he played the last games with both Hartford and New York Rangers with injured feet. In the end he left USA on the first possible flight. -”There has been many incidents, but I can’t divulge everything, I will do that at a later stage. There has been many incidents that has hurt me on a personal level, things that has made me struggle mentally. In regards to hockey this might be an idiotic decision but I have to think about my private life too.”, Lias falls silent, “I feel like I have lost the hunger and drive for [hockey] at the moment - and all these incidents has affected me. I feel like I have to get this under control first and foremost.” -”I know I am good enough to play over there, I think I proved that during the preseason. I thought I grabbed one of the centre spots behind Mika Zibanejad, but...”, Lias falls silent again, “My hockey confidence is probably in there somewhere but mentally it has been tough due to some things. That’s the problem.” -”There is a career that is more important than hockey, that career includes friends, family and my health. Hockey wise this might not be the smartest decision, we have to wait for the verdict a couple of years, if I want to play in the NHL. However, hockey is played in many places. Many people believe I have made a hockey decision but I have made this decision with my future health on mind.” -”Dad understood why I left, and more people will. I have spoken with my friends and my agents they really do understand why I left. That feels comfortable. When you don’t know the whole truth this will look like an idiotic decision, but I am no spoiled brat who moans about not playing for the New York Rangers. That’s not the point there are other factors.” Johan Rylander asks the question that comes to everyone’s mind, “We have seen a few coaches leave their NHL clubs during the season, Mike Babcock left Toronto Maple Leafs as an example, after it was revealed he was bullying players. Has it been a similar situation for you, have you been bullied Lias?” -”I don’t know what to say, or how to answer. It has been tough, that’s it. I will say more when the time is the right.” The Swedes on New York Rangers have been supportive, “It is sad when you have become so close on a personal level, and they get saddened when things like this happen. But my health comes first - and they understand that too.”
I'll say it again. Quinn treated Lias like crap and he's plays favorites with Howden. Now, Lias should have been mentally tougher. However, there is no doubt Quinn has a lot of Renney in him. I remember when Baranka dominated in the pre-season on a team without a lot of good defenseman and Renney quickly banished him to the minors. Not to mention playing scrubs like Hollweg, Ortmeyer and Betts over guys who were scoring 30 goals for the Pack and putting up 70+ points. He totally screwed over Immonen. Helminen as well. I don't think the Pack coach is a problem. He actually knows what he's doing. Quinn on the other hand didn't like Lias going back to when he kind of half-asses it in the useles Traverse tournament. I think Andersson absolutely has to pick up another step in his skating and work on other things. However, there is lots of blame here with Quinn. Some of our fans don't want to accept that.
No doubt this is on Quinn. He totally messed up Andersson, who would have been a top 6 forward without Quinn. He also f'd up DeAngelo, Strome, Lindgren, Fox, Chytil, and some of the other kids on the Rangers. Damn you Quinn for making Andersson a head case who bails on his team, then says the craziest stuff in Sweden that he has to backtrack on a few days later. QUINN!!!
While your sucking off Quinn, you might want to look at the fact the team has not improved at all defensively in his entire tenure here. Howden regressed. Buchnevich has regressed. Lias regressed. Plus the guys you mentioned wouldn't be doing jack shit if JD didn't get Panarin here. Panarin is the main reason DeAngelo and Strome are putting up lots of points. You talk like this coach has this team 10 games over .500 and in the playoffs. This team is 3 games over .500 and is firmly out of the playoff picture. Yes, Quinn had a lot to do with mentally screwing up Andersson. He gave Howden and Chytil every chance, over and over again. He gave Lias the finger after the Traverse tournament. It was obvious. I blame Lias for several things but when your coach as I've told your thick head at least 5 times, plays a kid in Howden over Lias game 1 when Lias made Howden look like crap in the pre-season, there's a personal problem the coach has with that player. You also talk as if Lias is a 25-30 year old man. He was 19 when this happened. He's still a kid.
I'm not sucking off Quinn at all. We'll see how it goes for him as the coach, but the Lias thing is not on Quinn. Truth is Lias needs to grow the F up and be a man. “I’ve called him, but haven’t talked to him. We’ve talked to the agent [Jarrett Bousquet] a lot. That seems to be the way he wants to do things at this point, which is fine,” Davidson told reporters before the Blueshirts practiced in advance of their flight to St. Louis for Saturday’s match against the reigning Stanley Cup champions. “He’s disappointed things haven’t worked out to this point. We’re disappointed things haven’t worked out to this point, which is natural. “When you look at this situation and try to analyze it, I’ve done a lot of research and I can’t really figure out exactly what the issue is other than disappointment. I think that this group here — the Rangers — treat players well, as most people know, do the best they can to provide them with every opportunity to become the best player they can be as quickly as possible. And I feel that that has happened here. “It’s a hard one to really figure out until you end up talking to Lias directly. We haven’t done that [because] at this point he wants everything to go through his agent. So we’ll see where it goes.” He won't even talk to JD. He is being a little baby about this. Walks off. Makes some ridiculously stupid comments. Certainly he is not helping his cause. Did Lindgren whine and walk off when he was sent down...no. Did Chytil...no. But here goes Lias. Enough already with this guy.
Quinn has done almost nothing to improve the young players here. JD did pretty much everything by bringing in Panarin. That has improved many young players offense. Hajek, Fox, Lindgren and DeAngelo still can't play high quality, defense. I haven't seen any improvement in team defense or the defense of any young player under Quinn. Chytil still sucks on draws and hasn't improved at all. Howden has gotten worse. Buchnevich is a bumbling idiot. The only reason this team wins any games is because of Panarin and Zibanejad along with the goalies which Quinn has nothing to do with. Quinn is going to get fired. Soon. As will Ruff. Thank God. The Pack coach will take over. Thank God. A coach that actually get a team to play team defense. Quinn was specifically brought in to develop young players. Not give the 7th overall pick in the draft the finger and tell him to go fuck himself because of a useless traverse city tournament which is exactly what he did. Right now Lias is all screwed up mentally. He went from being a coach's dream his entire life to being the whipping boy of some college coach asshat who hasn't done a fucking thing to teach any of these young players how to play NHL defense. All he's done is ride the skill of Panarin and Zibanejad. Whoopdeefuckingdo.
Maybe somehow this will have a positive outcome after a few month cooling period and reset. Hopefully the operation on his foot can get him skating and at least training over there by the summer. You won't get much for him now anyway. Fluid situation i guess. If it takes him 2 more years to reach the NHL so be it.
Right, so young players do well, and someone else deserves the credit. Young players do poorly, and it's Quinn hasn't done anything to improve them. Got it. Makes perfect sense.
You two are bickering like an old married couple. You can both be correct in this. Quinn fucked up by screwing him over coming out of the preseason, but maybe there was a point to it. Maybe Quinn wanted to ignite a fire in Lias and get him going, or maybe Quinn saw this attitude in the locker room and didn’t like it. Lias did himself NO favors by sulking around after not getting the line he wanted. Instead of manning up though, he took his ball and went home mentally....and then literally. Both of them are not without blame in this situation. Should Lias been above Howden? Yes. Should Lias have manned up and shown his coach, both in practice and in games, that he deserved to be moved up? Yes. They are both to blame for this situation. Neither is more to blame. Quinn screwed up by demoting Lias. Lias screwed up by acting like an entitled baby. Done.
What I've been saying all along. Quinn has blame in this as well. Problem is a ton of dumbasses in our fan base never think the coach of the Rangers does any wrong. That they know what players should be on what lines and on the team. Hockey coaches forever have been terrible with playing favorites. Every year young prospects get screwed over by thickhead, stubborn coaches. Renney, Torts and AV all did it, won nothing and got fired. Fucking Ryan Graves is a +30 this season because shit for brains AV didn't value stay at home defenseman with size. The simple fact is that if JD didn't bring Panarin in here, this team would suck beyond belief and probably be 10 games under .500. Strome would be doing jack shit without Panarin. DeAngelo might finish the season with 35 points if he was lucky. This coach has not improved the defensive play of any defenseman on this team. Period. He has not got Howden, Buchnevich or Chytil for the most part to improve. Chytil has done a little better but he's hardly wowing anybody. For a guy that was supposed to be able to work with young players, I haven't seen jack sjit from him.
How did Lias regress under Quinn when he never did jack shit to begin with? (66 NHL games - 3G/6A/59 SOG/33 PIM/-20 very Hollweg like numbers) Preseason performance got Lias on the starting roster over the ridiculously more talented Chytil, where he ended up shaking out line wise was on him. I agree with the play your #1 pick asap philosophy but there is definitely more to the story on both sides, the fact that Lias isn't talking directly to JD speaks volumes for his immaturity. With Hank we got Sweden's king, with Lias we have Sweden's princess and if princess can't get her feet into her glass slippers after a game she should talk to a trainer or at least inform her agent who can then relay the foot maladies to a trainer. Lias should ask CK about getting effed over by a coach, better yet two coaches but he persevered and is still here (hopefully long term). The NHL is much tougher than any international hockey Lias has played, hockey is played in many places but the best hockey is played in the NHL and what most professionals strive for.
Lias is certainly not mature. No doubt about that. It's not that easy to say he should talk to JD. That's like being a tattle tale if it is about getting along with the coach. What he should have said was this isn't working out between myself and the coach. If you could find a trade for me, please do so. Leave it at that. Sounded like the kid was on drugs when he made that statement. Medicated. Either way, Quinn as far as I'm concerned at this point sucks. This team isn't improving at all. Only reaon they win any games is because of Panarin, Zibanejad and the goalies.
I thought Lias was a reach at 7 since watching him play internationally he struck me as a grinder with some scoring ability but to their credit the Rangers had him playing with the big club almost immediately, it's not like he sat in Hartford for years. Lias started his NHL career the year he was drafted logging 7 games with 1G/1A. He spent last year getting baited into taking dumb penalties making it tough for Quinn to play him significant minutes let alone 2nd line minutes (42 games 2G/4A/41 SOG/-13/29 PIM). This year was even worse (17 games 1A/-8/13 SOG/4 PIM), the only thing Lias has improved is staying out of the box which is good. I want this kid to succeed but the drama makes it hard to root for him, my gut feeling is he has never been challenged in his life until Quinn came along. If he's hurt let the Rangers medical staff evaluate him and treat the injury. He made a lot of insinuating comments in that interview which I think are total bs and he'll need to apologize for.
The bottom line for Andersson is unless his skating and quickness on the puck improve, he won't make it at the NHL level long-term, no matter what team he goes to.
Quinn hated Lias after the traverse tourny which Lias blew off. It was obvious. If Quinn was a good coach he would have realized Lias was already playing against men. Lias obviously worked his ass off to impress Quinn the next year in pre-season and Quinn spit in his face and destroyed him mentally. You have to remember these kids are 19 and 20. Quinn handled this poorly. I expected Lias to be a lot mentally tougher than this. Either way, Quinn made the situation a lot worse. He has sucked off Howden from day one and he's shown very little this year. He keeps playing McKegg who blows. Playing favorites. Something NHL coaches do way too often. The fact that the young players on this team made no improvement defensively falls entirely on Quinn and his staff. The only thing that can save Quinn's sorry ass is Shesterkin. Sometimes when that next goalie comes along, the team feeds off it and feels invincible much like when Hank was breaking thru.
Did he hate the coach in the AHL when he sucked there also and walked out on him and his teammates? I think panzer is spot on. Lias got challenged by Quinn and couldn't handle it.
Lias did not earn himself any more ice time than he received. I dont know how anybody watching him could argue anything different. Right now, he can't create offensively. He has poor puck skills. He's slow. He's the definition of "just a guy". When he got in a game he went out there and existed, and that's about it. He's young and of course can change that, but he wasn't showing it in his time with the big club. His reassignment to the AHL gave him another chance to prove that narrative wrong and demonstrate the skills that got him drafted 7th overall. Instead he showed himself to be a mental midget in addition to a poor player and fled the country. I've said before you could argue he deserved a chance over Howden, and Id agree with that. But that's an indictment of Howden's struggles. It is NOT evidence of a successful and blossoming Lias being unjustly buried by Quinn. Quinn looked at two struggling young players and played one, and the other gave him zero reason to change his mind. How do you kill Quinn for that? The most frustrating thing about all this is that Lias' mentality was held out as one of the reasons we drafted him so high. He's a leader. He is a high character player. Well given how he's handling this situation, it appears that we got that as wrong as possible. There's plenty of things to criticize Quinn about, including the fact that we bleed shots allowed at a comical rate. But his handling of Lias is not one of them. If anything, Lias' behavior proves just how right Quinn was.
