Susbtantiallu worse? Not likely!
Doughty has the best season. He might have the better second season. Berard has a better 3rd.... Then there's the next 6 that Doughty hasn't played yet.
Does one elite seaon outweight an entire career? I don't think so...
Come on, you had to know I had an answer ready for this one.
Berard does not have the better 3rd-best season.
Doughty has been a #1 defenseman his entire career, in all situations.
Berard was a massive defensive liability before his eye injury, and even moreso after. He's a PP specialist.
He's been such a heavy PP specialist, in fact, that his TOI figures are inflated, and he was a never better than his team's #4-7 defenseman at even strength (which are all slots he occupied in teams' depth charts throughout his career), aside, strangely, from the last 2/3 of the 1999 season after coming to Toronto, when he received #1 minutes from Quinn. (But he became increasingly frustrating and was the #3 in the playoffs and #4 the next season until the injury)
Doughty played more minutes per game in his rookie season, than Berard played in his peak year (1999). Coaches just don't like to put Berard on the ice!
What's even more damning about Berard's icetime is that it was always for pretty poor teams with easier-to-crack defense corps. There's just no excuse for getting fewer ES minutes than Dennis Vaske, Barry Richter, David Harlock, Nick Boynton, Steve Poapst, Nathan Dempsey, Jon Klemm, Duvie Westcott, Rusty Klesla, Radek Martinek, Bruno Gervais, Freddy Meyer & Chris Campoli... and those are just the ones I am comfortable mentioning! He made the playoffs just three times (played just twice but he deserves credit for contributing to Toronto's 2000 season). Despite his offensive ability and being on these poor teams, his adjusted +/- is -59 because the team's GF/GA ratio went from 0.96 to 0.88 when he was on the ice. He played a ton on the PP (65%) but he didn't seem to make the PP very good - they averaged 9% worse than average throughout his career.
I do still think he would be a good PP option in the right scenario... he was on my list for available defenseman - at 90th. He just wasn't a very significant player.
It's looking like you have Doughty for Brown, as long as there's no other action tonight.
First off, look at when Phaneuf became a good ATD pick. Wait, he still isn't. Brian Campbell has a better career and he was a late third rounder here. Phaneuf is a product of being massively overhyped by the Canadian media and now playing for the Leafs, which automatically means he'll never righteously fall to where he should.
True. Good points.
But Doughty was probably a better player from the day he stepped on NHL ice.
Second point, yeah he'll probably become the best first pick, however my point is you shouldn't have pointed out the situation at all whenever it was unclear in the first place. You should have just let someone pick him and move on.
Yeah, looking back I wish I could have just deleted that rule from the OP and pretended it was never there. Then someone would have drafted Doughty and someone else would have said, "hey, I thought he wasn't eligible because of the 300 game thing!" and you and TDMM and anyone else who didn't know about the rule would say "what rule?" and I'd say the same thing, and that would be it.
But I didn't want to be sneaky about it.
