This is an incredibly deep dive on an incredibly fascinating player. I’ve loved watching Fantilli & I cannot wait to draft him in my Fantasy Hockey leagues. Thanks for breaking all this down.
Holy cow, that's some serious work Eric. Nice job. On a semi-related tangent, I was curious what you thought about Evanson's use of Fantilli and Waddell's roster construction? While hindsight is 20/20, to me it doesn't seem like brain surgery to figure out Fantilli should not have been working with grinders, even if he needed to grow into his role. That's Evanson's domain. But man, even more frustrating has been Waddell. Again, it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize how bad Elvis and Tarasov were. All the while Greaves was killing it. A lot of good hockey people -- Kevin Woodley included -- were singing Jet's praises. But Columbus left him in the minors until it was too late. It was almost like Waddell didn't believe his team could make the playoffs. Obviously Greaves played better than anyone could have hoped. Just as obvious is Greaves was likely to play better than Elvis or Tarasov could have hoped.
Re: Waddell, thats exactly what I was thinking! That's the frustration for me. Werenski and Marchenko were having outrageous seasons. Monahan goes down in January and the kids just rattle off wins and you don't start believing until like the week before the deadline. Pivoting from admittedly unsustainable and unexpected success isn't always wise but those are the forgivable mistakes in a season like this, not doing nothing!!
Fantilli’s complete breakthrough really helped Waddell out. If he just let him drown like that all season the team would be in a dire spot.
The Fantilli deployment was frustrating, predictably, but it was just a hard season at the start for him. I get the idea, Fantilli did need to get better at forechecking and that’s pretty much what those two do. He wasn't working with JvR and Labanc (though that was a Labanc shooting too much issue). Ideally Fantilli adapts a bit better and plays their game instead of trying to force his. Maybe that's a knock on his hockey sense but those two aren't always easy to play with and he's 20. All's well that ends well I suppose.
I can't understand the teams insistence on playing KJ with Cole Sillinger (unless they want to treat him as a C) instead of Fantilli but luckily they found some time at the end of the season.
Will be an interesting season. Looking forward to it already. And going back to the goaltending one more time. I would rather have seen Columbus take some of its $16 million in cap space, attach a third-round pick, and dump Elvis and kept Tarasov. I know they lost faith in him last season, but collectively, he's been better than Elvis and they could have gone with a cheap tandem in net and let him or Greaves take the crease as the year unfolded. Or sign James Reimer.
Tarasov was just so rough in moments last year. Very frustrating to watch him be unflappable one game and absolutely swimming in the next.
But I agree, if they're out on Elvis no sense in keeping him. I have a feeling Don is going to want to get a better goaltender sooner so it's definitely something I have an eye on heading into the season
This is an incredibly deep dive on an incredibly fascinating player. I’ve loved watching Fantilli & I cannot wait to draft him in my Fantasy Hockey leagues. Thanks for breaking all this down.
Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed. Going to be fun to follow this kid
Holy cow, that's some serious work Eric. Nice job. On a semi-related tangent, I was curious what you thought about Evanson's use of Fantilli and Waddell's roster construction? While hindsight is 20/20, to me it doesn't seem like brain surgery to figure out Fantilli should not have been working with grinders, even if he needed to grow into his role. That's Evanson's domain. But man, even more frustrating has been Waddell. Again, it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize how bad Elvis and Tarasov were. All the while Greaves was killing it. A lot of good hockey people -- Kevin Woodley included -- were singing Jet's praises. But Columbus left him in the minors until it was too late. It was almost like Waddell didn't believe his team could make the playoffs. Obviously Greaves played better than anyone could have hoped. Just as obvious is Greaves was likely to play better than Elvis or Tarasov could have hoped.
Re: Waddell, thats exactly what I was thinking! That's the frustration for me. Werenski and Marchenko were having outrageous seasons. Monahan goes down in January and the kids just rattle off wins and you don't start believing until like the week before the deadline. Pivoting from admittedly unsustainable and unexpected success isn't always wise but those are the forgivable mistakes in a season like this, not doing nothing!!
Fantilli’s complete breakthrough really helped Waddell out. If he just let him drown like that all season the team would be in a dire spot.
The Fantilli deployment was frustrating, predictably, but it was just a hard season at the start for him. I get the idea, Fantilli did need to get better at forechecking and that’s pretty much what those two do. He wasn't working with JvR and Labanc (though that was a Labanc shooting too much issue). Ideally Fantilli adapts a bit better and plays their game instead of trying to force his. Maybe that's a knock on his hockey sense but those two aren't always easy to play with and he's 20. All's well that ends well I suppose.
I can't understand the teams insistence on playing KJ with Cole Sillinger (unless they want to treat him as a C) instead of Fantilli but luckily they found some time at the end of the season.
Will be an interesting season. Looking forward to it already. And going back to the goaltending one more time. I would rather have seen Columbus take some of its $16 million in cap space, attach a third-round pick, and dump Elvis and kept Tarasov. I know they lost faith in him last season, but collectively, he's been better than Elvis and they could have gone with a cheap tandem in net and let him or Greaves take the crease as the year unfolded. Or sign James Reimer.
Tarasov was just so rough in moments last year. Very frustrating to watch him be unflappable one game and absolutely swimming in the next.
But I agree, if they're out on Elvis no sense in keeping him. I have a feeling Don is going to want to get a better goaltender sooner so it's definitely something I have an eye on heading into the season