Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I think this is reasonable, but I will go back to my earlier problems with this trade and point out that while Sutter may provide an improvement over Bonino for this reason, it is at best a marginal difference, and at worst completely missing the forest for the trees. The Canucks are a rapidly aging team on the decline, with a very underwhelming base of high end prospects and players to build around for the future. Sutter might address some smaller problems in the short term (and I'm not even certain he does that much), but in the long term the Canucks centre depth that consists of Horvat and Sutter slotting in at #1–2 is just plain ugly. It would be like the Flames pinning their hopes on a much less skilled and smaller Sean Monahan and Michael Backlund to be their top two centres.
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In your analysis Sutter is equivalent to Backlund.... I can agree to that. I might not want a 1 for one trade because the Flames have spent so much time developing Backlund but if it happened I do not think it would be an obviously bad trade.
Bonino is not equivalent to Backlund. I think his equivalent would be Tanguay when he was the Flames #1 C.
I think of the Canucks are getting rid of Bonino while he still has trade value, like they did with Hodgson and waited too long for Raymond. A list of smaller skilled guys that make the Canucks a small team easy to play against team when added to the Sedins.
The Canucks are so similar to the Flames before the Iginla trade. They are locked into the Sedins. Might the Sedins have a great 2015-16? Not at all impossible. The same way we were all hoping that Iginla/Bouwmeester could carry the team in 2012-13 when we knew it was a long shot.