Quote:
Originally Posted by Northendzone
For those of you who believe Berra is nothing, I am assuming that you had all knew exactly how the kipper trade was going to play out?
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There's a much longer list of goalies who teams gave up on that ended up doing nothing their careers versus the extremely rare Kiprusoff-type goalies.
I think Berra's potential is vastly over-rated. The guy is already 27 - he's not a kid. Goaltender aging curves are a lot different than people believe - for the vast majority of guys, there's a pretty sharp decline in their early 30's. People love to say that goalies can play into their late 30's, but that's a fallacy that simply isn't true for 99% of the goalies out there.
The other issue is that his flaws are massive - his positioning isn't poor, it's probably the worst in the league. Ditto goes for his rebound control. Even if he does improve at one or both it's tough to go from god-awful to very good, especially in your late 20's. Even if he somehow does he's likely going to start seeing a decline in his physical tools by that point.
This trade just looks like Roy's arrogance as a rookie GM - sees a guy with great physical tools and overpays ignoring all of the warts thinking he can turn him into a superstar.