Quote:
Originally Posted by marsplasticeraser
Flames lost biggest hitter in Hathaway (200 hits last year) and we’re already soft.
Lucic had 275 hits last year. He may also be useful in playoffs where speed becomes less important.
Neal was useless and seemed ok that he was useless.
Look at it if we had traded James Neal for Ryan reeves and retained $2.5mm of NealI think we’d all be happy at getting out from under Neal’s anchor contract. That’s kind of what we did. Lucic has similar offence and physicality.
Neal may work out in Edmonton, but I don’t think we had a need for a slow, non-physical, perimeter winger.
Flames may be only team where lucic can be an improvement.
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Lucic's physical play is on a whole other level compared to Hathaway. Even on the Oilers Lucic was still throwing game changing hits. Lucic also wins fights. Lucic is still the kind of player who shakes the boards when he hits someone. That really is something the team was missing.
Worst case scenario is that we've ended up with a goon. You're correct we already had the cap hit by signing Neal.
My worry is that the Lucic contract seems harder to buyout than the Neal one. Typically when players like Neal are moved out teams look to find easier says to get out of cap hits.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and we get a 40 point winger with big physical game.
.... If only we'd acquired Kadri. A line if Lucic, Kadri, and Tkachuk would have been the best pest line in history.