AjaxTelamon
Registered User
- Jul 8, 2011
- 6,072
- 1,828
Neal is a more skilled and in my opinion more complete player at his best. Hornqvist basically has two things that he can do - work in front of the net and compete hard. He does those two things really well, but Hornqvist is not a skill player.
One exchange of a skill player for a really good character, grit and grind guy is fine. But the Pens also lost Jokinen who has no replacement. Plus the added Spaling, Downie, and Carcillo all of whom are more hard working, character guys rather than hard working, skill guys. Instead of worrying about being too soft, maybe they should be worrying about having too many of the same type of player.
I disagree with pretty much everything you've said in this thread. We've gone from an easy to play against team with no bottom 6 to a deep team with a lot more sandpaper. Our bottom 6 this year is going to produce a ton more than last year, and will lessen the load on our big guns a lot. We didn't have insanely skilled top 6 wingers when we won the cup, we had guys who supported our stars.
And you gloss over the defense, where Ehrhoff + Despres is worlds better than Niskanen and Orpik, not to mention the cap savings.