Hivemind
We're Touched
Didn't Vokoun's agent say that they were the ones who reached out to Washington? I believe GMGM legitimately thought it would be Holtby's turn, then Vokoun fell into his lap at a dirt cheap price .I never really believed George's spoken words
Secrecy was the order of the day with him. When he did speak, it thus rang hollow to me.
It is Braden Holtby's turn. Next day, it wasn't. Have fun in Hershey another year.
Not saying that Niemi is a world beater, but he's not a scrub. I'm saying the only way we win with a goaltender on the level of Niemi or Theodore is with a stacked blueline, which we didn't have (with or without Pronger).Niemi isn't that good either. He's not a world apart from Theodore and Theodore is certainly better than Conklin, Markannen or Leighton.
Oates isn't the only coach in the world to prefer to play defensemen on their natural side. His stringency with forwards was certainly unusual, but defensemen generally are much more comfortable on one side of the ice. We weren't going to see a Green/Pronger pairing.Didn't matter Pronger was a RD. Oates wasn't coaching us back then. And Poti was pretty darn good for us btw
Poti was fine, but he's not a cup caliber 1LD.
Made us better? Obviously.If you don't think that Chris F'ng Pronger would have made us an infinitely better team then we will have to disagree on a great many things. Pronger was a stud and dominated in all phases of the game.
Made us a cup caliber team? I don't believe so, not without more changes. The goaltending and defensive depth on those teams were weak. They were more than Chris Pronger away from the Stanley Cup.
Luca Sbisa was viewed on a similar level to Alzner and Carlson at that point in his career, and already had a half-season of NHL experience under his belt. Joffrey Lupul was a young, legitimate top 6 forward coming off of back-to-back 20 goal seasons and with a 28 goal season a couple years before that. They then gave up TWO first round picks on top of that. If you want to use that as the basis for the trade (rather than the widely reported ask of a young prospect and young goalie), then the similar package from Washington is giving up Laich, Alzner, and two first round picks (which turned into Johansson and Kuznetsov).GMGM threw out all those names but he never said that. If we look at what Pronger historically went for it would not have taken all that. Guys like Lupul, Sbisa and a couple draft picks. Again take what GMGM says and throw it out the window.
The guy was never a straight shooter like BMac is.