We drafted a Goaltender instead of a projected #1 center… we could of had Kopitar and selected Jonathan Quick in the second round. I was screaming at the TV when they took Price over Kopitar.
I guess Gainey like a lot of NHL GMs go with the best player available with a 5th overall pick...right or wrong and they felt Price was the best available. I mean 5 other teams skipped Kopitar also. I wonder if he would have had the same career as a Hab.
If only we’d kept the journeyman instead of the HOFer…
He was a starter for us, he was for St-Louis, he played like a starter in his brief time in Washington and New York also. It might not have been for long period of times but you don’t play over 500 NHL games without having been a starter at one point in your career.
This is just off my memory, but it was literally days or weeks after the Halak-Eller trade. It wasn't something someone spit out after Giroux broke out into a #1C. Not like how people keep adding our best players to rumoured Lecavalier trades. In the end I think people were up to Subban, Price, Patches, four first round picks, and the rights to the 70's dynasty cups for Vinny.
All those teams were bad though. In the rest of his career combined Halak hasn't played as many playoff games as he did that one year with us. He only got games in 2020 because Rask left the bubble to go home. Otherwise he had 9 games the rest of his career. Even on the teams he did make the post-season with, they chose to start another goalie. How is that starter material? Starters don't play 40 games a year.
My point is you don’t draft a goalie when there’s a projected #1 center available and your franchise needs a center. It was a very bad move in my opinion. Halak or no Halak, we could have drafted Quick in the second round.
We could of had Kopitar along with that journeyman.. we would have been a much better and more exciting team.
1. It would've been Kopitar and some other goalie. Halak was never really a starter in the NHL. He was always a platoon or number two.
Perhaps but back then, teams were encouraging a more defensive style of play. Price was a logical choive to build around. Nowadays, goalies have been relegated to a lesser role, as more teams are struggling to find offensive players.
Totally get what you're saying. I mean, who wouldn't take Quick and Kopitar over Price? Sounds great.
I guess it’s just a matter of preference, there was some chatter about us selecting Kopitar because we were in need of a #1 center. I was expecting us to take him.
Brule would have been an absolute disaster of a pick. Yes it’s true that Halak was never really able to establish himself in other cities as a #1 despite his very good numbers.. was it a Penny run or was he made to play in Montreal under this pressure? We’ll never know but the former might be more probable I’ll give you that one.
I actually remember thinking Kopitar would be interesting. Big Center in the vein of a Mats Sundin. Honestly I don’t follow the minors much and go by the writings of the draft ‘experts’ but he was intriguing. I was a little surprised that he fell out of the top 10.
Ironically it was the 2009 season where there was a lot of hype and bandwagon support just to have that season go off the rails and end on a sweep. Then in 2010 when expectations were super low, we caught fire and everyone hopped on. It was a great time!
Is the board getting dumber and dumber or am I just now at the get where I need to start yelling at kids to get off my lawn?
