I fell for the Durzi thing a year ago too. He was awful inthis season, and in playoffs, just awful, get off the ice awful. McLellan was widely critiqued for playing Durzi so much. I felt he was admirable year before playoffs but the dropoff, severe.
Kupari has never done a thing and isn't likely too. Too peripheral, too cute. Makes some nice looking moves with puck that fail. Don't think he's going to put it together.
Iafallo is in decline and injury problems. Regression imminent.
With Dubois its possible he'll be better in the right environment and team. Vilardi just can't stop gettting injured.
Going with older Talbot kind of a weird move. LA are really, really old, bang on that one.
Movarare is better than Durzi imo. But hasn't got much looks. They have a replacement right there. Its arguable Spence is around what Durzi is. In anycase this season Kings have Gavrikov instead of Durzi, thats a win.
Idk I think it's always a bit of a red herring to say a guy who hasn't gotten the opportunity to play those kind of minutes would be better than a guy that is playing those minutes. Maybe they will, but you just really don't know.
I agree, Durzi has been fairly pedestrian in the playoffs, but he's there playing those minutes against guys that will beat you and will make you look silly. Nothing against Movarare, just think until you see top 4 action in those situations you don't really know what you have. Most defenseman will look leaky when they're being tasked for the McDavid or Draisaitl matchup for 7 games, and frankly outside of a few pizzas Durzi's raw scoring chances and possession numbers were better than a number of the Vegas defenders. Durzi just didn't get the benefit of saves.
That's not to say that Durzi is amazing, but he's a piece of their depth that's been fire tested, and you can't just assign value, particularly on young defender's until they're for tested. I'd point to a guy like Bear who many here thought would make losing a guy like Russell relatively moot, but when push came to shove Bear got buried in those situations.
I don't know that Iafollo is slowing down just yet, last year was his most productive ever. But he is getting older for sure and has some hard miles on him. That's fair enough.
I also agree that kupari isn't a huge loss. Like yams or pulju here, not likely he'd have shown much more than he already has. But I do think his inclusion in an already lopsided deal just makes it more lopsided.
In any case, I do think the kings have taken a step back and not forward. But maybe that's just me.