The Nemesis
Semper Tyrannus
The last of the current Quarantine Survival Threads I want to introduce for now is one that's a little more "normal" for HF standards. And also the only one that's likely to actually change to a new thread on a regular basis.
Every few days I'm going to pose a question for everyone to debate or discuss. Not really any different than we might get any other time on here except that I'm going to keep things rolling by having set intervals at which I'll be giving new questions rather than simply having a thread start whenever and die whenever.
Unlike the trivia challenge, this isn't going to be a contest. I originally thought of running it somewhat like a proper competitive debate in that each side would present a case and then be judged a winner, but that just doesn't seem like fun and I don't have the time or drive to want to play debate moderator over and above regular board moderator.
Just have at it with whatever question is posed, however you wish to.
The only thing I will say is that in the interest of keeping this a light, time-wasting activity akin to the other threads, I will probably be a little tighter in terms of moderating the tone and discourse level of the thread. This is a place to bat about opinions and thoughts on a question in the name of fun. Since it's not about "winning" I will likely have a low tolerance for people presenting their case in a "this is the only acceptable answer. If you disagree you're wrong and should feel bad" manner or any amount of goalpost-moving, semantic-arguing, hairsplitting, needlessly pissy pedantry or seemingly intentional griefing. Things kinda suck right now and we all should be better and remember that getting to sit around and talk hockey with friends and comrades should be a welcome respite from whatever else is going on.
So, on with the question for round 1:
If you could take one skill or ability from a member of the current San Jose Sharks roster and give it to another player on the current roster, what would you take, who would you give it to, and why?
For example, and partially using non-current Sharks to avoid tainting the question, would you give Patrick Marleau's speed to Tomas Hertl? Brenden Dillon's physicality to Kevin Labanc? Joonas Donskoi's stickhandling to Noah Gregor? The choice is yours as long as you remember the following:
a) I'm only talking about current Sharks on both ends of the real question. Nobody from prior seasons and nobody who was not on the roster or in the organization as of the suspension of the season. The use of former Sharks above is just for the purposes of that example.
b) To be clear, "health" is not a skill, nor are body attributes or conditions. You can't propose giving someone Patrick Marleau's injury resistance, nor can you grant a player uninjured body parts or physical attributes like being bigger/taller. We're talking specific skills and abilities, either tangible (skating attributes like speed/agility/balance, strength or checking ability, shooting and passing ability, stickhandling, or deking, Goalie abilities too such as lateral movement, reflexes, glove/stick prowess, and so forth.) or intangible (offensive IQ, defensive IQ/positioning knowledge, reading angles and deciphering opponents' intent, etc)
c) We would assume that if you give a skill to a player, that player gets all the requisite secondary characteristics to be able to make proper use of it. So if you granted physicality to a player like, say, Labanc, we assume that having the skill would make him of the temperament to use it and that he would be able to do so without grinding his own body into dust (without him necessarily packing on 20 extra pounds or growing 4 inches taller).
I haven't decided yet how frequently I'll swap out or clean up this thread. We'll have to see how it goes. A new thread for every question makes sense, but I don't know if I want to have to explain the concept from scratch again every time, nor if I want the front page to be littered with a half-dozen still-somewhat-posted-in iterations of this concept to the extent that it chokes out every other avenue of discussion. So how this progresses is yet to be determined. But I will come and change out the question for a new one every few days.
