With
alko mentioning the Rangers thread, I tought this thread about the following LA trade after the Rangers trade was Bettbaned was appropriate to link to on the Kings board. Nice to read the fans reminiscing about one of their former star players. And of course still being mad att Todd Simpson and Gary Bettman 15-20 years later
:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1450631&page=2
Some nice goals that I haven´t seen in this thread. The one in post 25 where an rookie Datsyuk hits an LA King with his pass trying to reach Larionov along the boards behind the net (the commentator thinks he´s trying to go middle, that´s not what it seems to me...) is an nice one out of historical content. Even if they where the ones who got scored, it binds a player who played in the Soviet leauge in 1977 to an NHL player in 2016 who will play in the KHL to at least 2018, if injuries doesn´t happen. That´s 41 years of proffesional hockey on dispaly there. Larionov at the time also being 41 y.o. and Datsyuk 23.
And you can also see Datsyuks defensive instincts are already there. Before Smolinski has broken up the play he is heading back home, seeminlgy almost pushing himself away from Philippe Boucher to gain speed
Datsyuk ain´t far away from breakin up that pass from Smolinski, even if he himself was quite far away from there when Datsyuk himself made the bad pass to start the turn over just a few moments earlier. Speedy Dandenault almost gets an stick on speedy Palffy, but it´s quite impressive that Datsuyk almost can keep up with those two.
And of course, the main man of this thread makes an fantastic move on an prime, albeit not peak, Hasek.
If there was an list to be made off best break away players ever, Palffy in the top 10 wouldn´t surprise me. Few where as good to make room for himself with just rocketing up the ice. And on the top of that, he had that calm in top speed to bury the puck in the net with often a smooth 5-hole or an high back hand after some moves.
