Proposal: Kings - Flyers

[BrindamoursNose]

Eh, I'll believe it when I see it, really.

The defense is still the defense, tasked with defending. It's very good to have offensive contributions from the backend, but it's never been shown necessary to have "gamebreakers." It is, however, very necessary to get good defense from your defensemen, and Doughty gives you that better than anyone. I'm not out here talking about going and finding a 55 year old Derian Hatcher, I'm talking about a true modern shutdown guy who, by the way, has fantastic offensive pop anyway.

There's nothing really here to discuss. You have some theory of hockey and roster construction, and it's yours, and that's fine. Not sure I understand it, or that most people would agree with it, but glad to have had the exchange.

When you oversimplify what I said by insisting that Ghost/EK/others would only be offensive contributors (and not defensive), then yes what I said seems silly. I'd hope you know as well as I do that Ghost and EK are at the very least competent defenders, which is what you need to win. Aside from those two, there's 4 other slots on the roster to balance them out if you want a more defense-first mentality. Gamebreakers at any position should be a necessity for a team planning to seriously compete for a Cup. Doughty can be that, but so can other players (one of them being Ghost I think). Ivan Provorov already is the guy you're describing (although he's having a down year). If we don't have Doughty, we have another Norris-caliber defenseman (again assuming that he gets out of this year's slump). We're really in no danger of having a bad defense in the future if we never sniff a Drew Doughty.

My theory on how to construct a roster is pretty sound. Many pretty good players can be better than 1 great player in your D-corps. I'd love all great players, but the cap doesn't work that way. It's strategic planning in the long-term & asset management (since again, I think Voracek & Ghost are being criminally underrated in terms of value). Don't have to agree with my belief of course, but it isn't out of left-field to look for balance rather than being top-heavy.