Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
He would be the heir apparent to Backlund for sure.
Big fan of trying to acquire him and rumors are that he was part of the package offered for Tkachuk
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I just look back to all these failed veteran winger acquisitions.. Brouwer, Neal, arguably even Lucic and Toffoli to an extent, and the one common theme is that we haven't really had a quick, high-skill, playmaking centreman to make their job
easy.
Brouwer's success in St. Louis came alongside Stastny in his prime.
Neal's always had some pretty good playmaking centres too. When those guys got here, we always tried to plop them in the wrong roles.
"go play with Backlund, oh wait you can't shutdown defense? That's not gonna work"
"go play with Bennett and Jankowski, oh wait, the best playmaker on the line is the left winger who barely gets the puck in open ice?"
"go play with Jarnkrok and Dube, oh wait, there is no playmaker on that line at all"
One of the most underated pieces on the last decade of the Boston Bruins is David Krejci. He made the jobs of his linemates - guys like Lucic, Horton, Iginla, Hall, the list goes on - as easy as possible. Bergeron and Marchand deserved the press, but having a guy like Krejci really made their forward groups balanced.
Can Necas be Krecji-tier? I dunno. But I like that his style of play is something that would ostensibly make a winger like Tyler Toffoli play to his potential. Arguably even moreso than Nazem Kadri, who I love, but is more of a shoot first creator.