613Leafer
Registered User
- May 26, 2008
- 12,838
- 3,667
Because there is no point to having good centres if they're not elite. A #1 guy is someone who you don't need to upgrade in order to compete with, and there's only about 10-15 guys on that list. If you had three #1b/2 Centres you really shouldin't think twice about trading them all for an elite #1.
thats pretty much the definition I go with. Can you realistically win the SC with that person as your #1C? Or would you be going into the playoffs looking at that as a weakness on the roster, relative to most top contenders.
Andy MacDonald is probably the worst #1 C to win the SC in the past decade, and at the time, he was still a ~PPG guy and had the benefit of having two HHOF dmen on his team (which the vast majority of teams dont have). So if your teams #1 C is distinctly worse than Anaheim Ducks version of Andy MacDonald, distinctly worse than Bergeron, Toews, Kopitar, Datsyuk, Crosby, etc, then you very likely need an upgrade at that position to win the SC, and thus IMO dont have a true #1 C.