GM: David Bell
Coach: Willie Desjardins
Last season: 13th overall. In playoffs, lost to Munich
Ins and Outs
(Season 17 to Season 18)
In: Martin Jones (free agent), Dylan Gambrell (free agent)
Out: Ryan Pulock (free agent), Ryan McLeod (waivers), Keith Petruzzelli (free agent), Logan Couture (free agent), Brock McGinn (free agent),
Potential Lineup
Matthew Tkachuk/Aapeli Rasanen/Robby Fabbri
Jason Robertson/Dominic Canic/Alex Tuch
Jesper Boqvist/Dylan Gambrell/Seth Jarvis
Scott Laughton/Morgan Frost/J.J. Peterka
Marcus Pettersson/Evan Bouchard
Dylan Samberg/Pavel Mintyukov
Justin Barron/Eric Brannstrom
Martin Jones/Akira Schmid
A Question:
Are the Guerriero better than they were last year? Yes? No? Maybe? It’s hard to tell. When you have a roster with a lot of under-30 players you get better simply through evolution. Players with 74 OV ratings last season have 75 or 76 OV ratings this year. 80s became 82s. You get the picture. But some important pieces are no longer in Italy. Logan Couture has been replaced by Dylan Gambrell as third-line center. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like a positive move. Ryan McLeod has been replaced by Morgan Frost as center of Line 4 and that looks like a step down also. And Ryan Pulock, 32, high-tailed it out of town after being a mainstay of the Milan defense for 9 seasons. Rumors are that Milan General Manager Don Vito Campana (David Bell) doesn’t feel his time with Pulock was finished and he’d love to take him for one last ride. Perhaps into the countryside or along the serene lakefront some night. Pulock will be a big loss. He scored a career-high 50 points and had a career-high 72 takeaways last season. No wonder Athens was willing to give him a long-term $7.2 million contract. We will see if his absence affects Milan’s team stats significantly. Milan was the 10th best at limiting shots on goal and the departed players were a big part of that. But they were 20th in goals against and that difference between shots allowed and goals allowed can only be attributed to one man. Milan showed some patience with young goalie Keith Petruzzelli, giving him four seasons as the starter before pulling the plug on that experiment and letting him leave for free agency this summer. Veteran Martin Jones will be between the pipes for the Guerriero this season and he is still sharp enough at age 37. Jonesy’s workload shrunk to 16 games with Kosice last year, but two seasons ago, he played 61 games and had a save percentage of 90.8. If you are into Websim’s Goalie Rating, Jones currently ranks 16th in the league, so that should be a nice improvement for Milan this year.
Rose’s Focus
“The Milanese guys can really attack you and score goals. They were tied with Bern for 5th in the league last season, averaging 3.78 goals per game. But Bern did better in the standings because their defense was better. Nine-tenths of a goal per game better, which is substantial. The problem I see with the Guerriero is consistency. Sometimes they play like equipment manager Daniele Rosamilia filled their water bottles with espresso, other times like chianti was the water of the day. Coach Willie Desjardins is not wrong to want to unleash his snipers again this season and the top two lines remain unchanged, with Aapeli Rasanen and Dominic Canic taking the faceoffs and doing the playmaking. Milan will slowly work on improving defensively, but in the meantime, enjoy the wild, fast-paced, espresso-fueled fireworks show that is the Milan Guerierro. Alex Tuch, Matthew Tkachuk and Rasanen were all 30-goal scorers and Canic tallied 28 times. And if you know your hockey, you know that GM David Bell has some firepower on the right side of his two lower lines with youngsters Seth Jarvis and J.J. Peterka. Those two may not get the chance to shine all that much this season but they are both high-value assets. But there was one member of the Milan family who was too quiet last season. What or who were you hiding from, Jason Robertson? Me? Don Vito Campana? I hear a couple of his associates want to invite you to a sit down. That’s not a good thing. With your ability, you should be threatening to score 50 goals by now. 23 last year? No seasons of greater than 27 goals? You better start producing more or they’ll size you up for a pair of cement skates.”
