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Originally Posted by kyuss275
Of those players you listed , other than Faulk , can you honestly say that any of them are 1st line /1st pairing players? Eric Stall is turning into a 2nd line center. Jordan is like Backlund (2b/3a center). Skinner with his head injuries is a 2nd line player. Lindholm is going to be great, but he's not there yet.
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Eric Staal is a very good top line forward. He hasn't lost his game because his stats have fallen off a bit. He would be on Calgary's top line if not for the importance of developing Monahan.
If the cap hits were the same, you wouldn't trade Backlund for J. Staal in a heartbeat? I would, and I'm a Backlund fan. And Backlund is our #2C right now, and last year when we made the playoffs.
Skinner may have had some concussions but that doesn't mean those have permanently diminished his play. He had 33 goals in 2013-14 which is more than Hudler had last year. He had 18 goals
last year which is more than Hudler had in 2013-14. At the very least he's a comparable player to Hudler, except stronger and a decade younger.
I'm not saying the Hurricanes are a great team, but I'm saying Hiller would have led them to a better record, Ramo a similar record, and Varlamov/Bobrovsky the playoffs in the East. Cam Ward is not as good as we think.
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I will say you have convinced me that he is no better than a 1b goalie. He is still better than Ramo.
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Ramo and Ward are interchangable. People are low on Ramo right now because he had two bad games and a bad last 5 minutes against the Jets. When Ramo was posting back-to-back shutouts last year, or carrying us through that east coast trip, or took Hiller's starting spot against the Ducks, people were not as low on Ramo. Under virtually the same larger sample size I just showed you that they're statistically comparable even when you look at the save percentages isolated by perimeter (low-danger) / home-plate (medium-danger) / crease (high-danger). Bad teams might allow more high-danger scoring chances but that doesn't mean goaltenders' save percentages against them change.