Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Outside of last year's great-goaltending Penguins, consider the runs of just about every recent team to go deep in the playoffs. They needed players like TJ Brodie to win 2-1 and 1-0 low event games. Here are some of the blue line top 4/6s that come to mind:
2017 Predators
Ekholm-Subban
Josi-Ellis
2016 Penguins
Dumoulin-Letang
Maatta-Daley
Cole-Schultz
2016 Sharks
Vlasic-Braun
Martin-Burns
2015/2013/2010 Blackhawks
Keith-Seabrook
Oduya/Campbell-Hjalmarsson
2015 Lightning
Hedman-Stralman
Coburn-Garrisson
2014 Kings (I don't remember their exact pairings)
Mitchell-Doughty
Muzzin-Voynov
Martinez-Green
Regehr
Without Brodie's high-level play, we don't have a chance at playing that kind of game. It's not about outscoring the Oilers in October. It's about the cup. The way this team needs to play will never be glamorous.
Forwards ARE important. We need forwards who generate more out of the cycle and create tempo off the rush. But don't be so sure we don't already have them internally. We have star players like Gaudreau and Tkachuk. We have some serious star potential in Sam Bennett, who is already a better defensive center than Duchene. We have more centers who I feel will consistently contribute offensively in Backlund, Monahan, and Jankowski. We have supporting players in Ferland, Versteeg, and Frolik. It's easy to look at Matt Duchene's box score numbers and things "70 points. He'd obviously make us better" but everything has an opportunity cost. On the power play. On the PK. At 5 on 5. You're not adding 25 goals. Someone will score less because of it. And in Duchene's case his skillset is almost redundant. So how many team goals have you really added? Seven? Eight? But at what other expense in terms of two-way play or controlling the boards? I don't consider Duchene a multifacetted player.
MacKinnon is an interesting contrast to that. For starters he's better defensively than Duchene, and he's a righted hand shot which means the only guy potentially seeing their role reduced would be Versteeg, which is the guy whose role you want to be reduced to be a deep team. Not Monahan or Bennett or Tkachuk or Gaudreau. But I assume he's an untouchable, and even then I'm not sure we could weather the loss of Brodie. Overall the top priority right now might be adding a forward, but trading Brodie would open up a new hole. We want to fill a hole, not replace one hole with another.
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Interesting points, I don't really agree with your points on Bennett. He hasn't really shown he can constitently be counted on in a defensive role and I haven't seen enough "serious" star potential. Yes he has lots of potential but at this point I would be satisfied if he could be a 50 pt player, him becoming a star is much more unlikely. I don't think the Flames are looking to trade Bennett for Duchene rather have Duchene as a winger they could play with Bennett to elevate his game.