I think Ekholm is undoubtedly better than EJ has been at any point in his career. That's just my opinion thought and i'll gladly respect the opinion of somebody else as I always do.
Also is there anybody else you'd suggest being better? OR do you just think EJ was SO MUCH better than Ekholm that my Blake comment was outlandish? With a reaction like this...."Also pump the freaking brakes on the Ekholm train. The best D since Rob Blake?" I would have guessed you had a major list of reasons why you thought I went overboard with that quote.
Well the best D since Rob Blake makes him sound way better than he is IMO.
And IMO EJ was an easy one for me but yeah of course like always most of it depends on personal opinion. Won't argue with that.
After thinking about it I have to agree that the list is not very long.
But thinking back, I don't think we even had another legit #2 D on this team aside from EJ since Blake retired. Atleast not for longer than a year.
Barrie putting up 50+in a season is impressive but that probably does not make him a better D and the other one is maybe Beauch with his great half season. Aside from that I don't recall many noteworthy seasons for any of our blueliners which is really,really sad.
So yeah it was maybe a bit too harsh but mostly because our D has been an abomination for the last decade or so.
I'd like to fix it for the long haul via the draft.
Which Duchene for Ekholm would be very counterproductive to reaching that goal so I wouldn't be happy about it.
Again the value is not bad at all(even though I think it would be NSH selling high and the Avs selling low) but I would personally not like it for the outlined reasons.
But I can see Sakic doing that and making you happy. IMO it would not be a good decision for the longterm future of the Avs but I thought that of most of our recent decisions in the last few years and so far it hasn't really stopped them either so I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again.
We will see. In the end we can't influence what happens anyways.