Paul Mara

[Booba]

I have a few questions about Paul Mara.

I know he was drafted 7th overall and he was a PPG player in the OHL. What was the scouting report on him at that time?

He started his career with Tampa. He had 36 points in 101 games before being traded to Phoenix at the age of 21. Then in Phoenix he managed to score 10 goals in 2002-2003 and then in 2003-2004, he had 42 points. The season right after the lock-out was the best for him with 15 goals and 47 points. After that season, he was traded to Boston and that's when his offensive numbers went down dramatically. In his last 5 seasons, he has only managed to score 12 goals.

I'm a Habs fan so I watched Mara quite a bit in the past few years. I think that he is a decent 5th or 6th dman. He is solid defensively and he can bring some toughness. However, he is slow and it seems like even Hal Gill has better offensive abilities than him. So I wonder what happen to his offensive game? Did he managed to get good numbers in Phoenix because he was logging a lot of minutes on the power play?

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[Hardyvan123]

A quick look at the roster for Phoenix is those 2 years would indicate that he logged PP time by default.

He was a decent prospect coming up as I recall as well, not that the 97 draft was very strong though.

A quick look at the top 4 dmen picked in that draft shows how weak it was with Eric Brewer, Mara, Nick Boyton and Brad Ference all going in the top 10.

Quite possibly one of the worst draft years ever IMO.

 

[Booba]

A quick look at the roster for Phoenix is those 2 years would indicate that he logged PP time by default.He was a decent prospect coming up as I recall as well, not that the 97 draft was very strong though.

A quick look at the top 4 dmen picked in that draft shows how weak it was with Eric Brewer, Mara, Nick Boyton and Brad Ference all going in the top 10.

Quite possibly one of the worst draft years ever IMO.

I was looking at that too.
In 2003-2003 the D squad was awful :

Mara-Suchy
Vaanaen-B.Ference
Hulse-Tanabe*
Spiller

*Tanabe missed 37 games

However in 2005-2006 the dman squad was way better :
Morris-Mara
Michalak-Ballard
O'Donnell-*Gauthier/Seidenberg

*Gauthier was traded for Seidenberg half-way through the season

Anyway, this doesn't explain everything because I don't think that right now Mara would be able to crack the 30 points mark even by playing 22-25 minutes per game with PP time.

 

[sr edler]

he transferred his offensive game for this beard