Quote:
Originally Posted by TheScorpion
I don't understand why there's been so much hand-wringing and sky-is-falling-ing about a swap of depth pieces when far more important players like Gaudreau, Monahan, Lindholm, Tkachuk, Hanifin, Giordano, and Rittich have been giving fans so much more to cheer about
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and Lucic has pretty much done what he was brought in to do. No one should have illusions of Lucic coming in and scoring 20. What he has done though is wake the team up on 2 different occasions through his physicality. He’s also not a liability while he’s out there, so that’s good.
Neal looks like a PP specialist with a crazy shooting percentage. Maybe that’s what Edmonton needed, but it certainly wasn’t what we needed.
I’d generally side with “whoever gets the best player wins the trade”, but neither of these players are very good - but they seem to fit different holes, and that’s what the trade was made to address for both sides.
I still don’t hate the trade, and it’s pretty clear the Flames mistake was in signing Neal in the first place. Our pro scouts have not done a great job in assessing free agents when they’re looking for players who can score, which I find funny. Tree has spoken in the past about having concerns about where the scoring will come from in the off-season, and every time he tries to address that piece via free agency it has been a disaster. The good signings have been the support players brought in to compliment, not the ageing players who he thinks he can bring in to score goals and play up the lineup.