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Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop
Giordano was lining up with the likes of Dmitry ####ikov on Moscow Dynamo at 25. (To be fair, he probably learned a lot for Danil Markov that year).
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Close; he was 24. But he already had 55 NHL games under his belt before he went to Russia.
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Mackey's projected as a top 4 defender, no? Or that range..
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That seems to be the hope, but there is a big, big gap between ‘serviceable on the second pairing’ and ‘one of the top 10 defencemen in the entire NHL’. Both count as top-4 defenders, but Giordano used to fit the second description and Mackey
might live up to the first. And he hasn't got a lot of runway left.
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Maybe Valimaki pushes him out... Calgary's defence is still pretty young. Number one guy? May have to address that from outside the organization.
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I definitely agree with that. What I disagree with is the idea that Mackey is being groomed for a particular roster spot. To me, it looks like a pretty wide-open competition for roles and ice time among four young LD, with Hanifin holding the lead and Kylington still bringing up the rear. It seems to me that if any of the four is being specifically groomed, it's probably Valimaki. The organization had very high hopes for him before injuries slowed his development.