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Originally Posted by Itse
Just to comment on Hagman:
It's weird to hear all this inconsistency talk, considering that everytime I've seen him play for Team Finland, he's been an absolute stud. Yeah, not the greatest sniper you'll see, but total effort every shift, every situation, everywhere. He's basicly the prototype (among others) of why Team Finland has kept overachieving in the highest level (olympics/world cup): total commitment.
That said, I can totally understand why he hasn't been like that at the Leafs, and besides, age tends to mellow people down. Still, I think a lot people here will like Hagman.
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He's done really well with the Leafs. I'm sure Burke wasn't looking to move him because he didn't deliver there. He did.
Some people have an odd view of him. Rogers on fan960 called him one-dimensional (although he didn't mean it in a disparaging way), for example, which isn't true at all. If anything, it's the consistency of his offense that might be a question mark, not his defensive responsibility.
Mark Spector takes it a little too far to the opposite direction, but he's closer to the truth:
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And for Iginla, who desperately needed some talented forwards with whom to work, Sutter procured Stajan and left-winger Hagman, a player Flames fans will come to like immensely. He is like Jere Lehtinen-light -- the multi-faceted kind of player whose name came up last season when I was down in Dallas during the height of the Sean Avery fiasco.
The distraction that Avery had become, a Stars exec told us last year, was obscuring the fact that losing Hagman to Toronto as a free agent was becoming a far bigger loss than anyone in Dallas had anticipated. In the Stars dressing room, players were saying the same thing.
Hagman is a very good player -- very responsible defensively, priced well at $3 million for two more seasons after this. He is now 30, and gives Calgary the perfect mix of offence and defence needed to play the other wing with Iginla.
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http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2010/..._dealing_dion/