member 71782
Guest
Give me a 50 point spark-plug in the sixth round and I take it every time. Same with Purboo; 29-goals in 2018-19, over 220 straight games, and leadership... as a ninth-rounder!! Yes, it would have been fantastic to have huge superstars on the team every season, but these guys were given opportunity and ran with them. You give me another dose of their results and I'd gladly take it. Instead of going "they were good but not great", we should be blaming the lack of success on the higher end guys who didn't become "superstars", so to speak.
I think you're missing the point.
These guys make excellent role players, they can compliment a good team. I have no issue with most of them being here as I stated, especially with Boka I would take him every time but as you were saying earlier, give you a team full of guys like this, sprinkle in a few superstars and you're good to go. Well we've had teams full of guys like this, sprinkle in a few superstars and where did we end up?
Each and everyone of these guys contributed something, never said they didn't but they became the core of the team and we became a middle of the pack team that's continuing to spin it's wheels.
Mid/late round guys should do exactly what these guys did in terms of production and play, that's fill a role, contribute when given opportunities that are built around their skillsets etc. Boka and Purboo began to shine offensively when given first line minutes with Luchuk and other much better players while other much better players were buried beneath them. Now if they were putting up 30 goal seasons when this was going on, combined with their other skillsets then they would have been gems. That's not what happened. Purboo put up some goals his last two years, most while standing in front of the net cleaning up rebounds. Boka started to score a few goals but he wasn't contributing much else offensively. They were used out of their normal skillsets and if someone else wasn't making them look good in those situations they weren't producing.
Would take them every time in specific roles but not as the core of a team.
As for leadership.
Purboo certainly wasn't showing much leadership when he started coasting any time he was moved from the first line. There was a lot of drama during Boka's last two years when he wore the C. That's not leadership, that's players having certain expectations and when their expectations weren't met they couldn't get the team on the same page.
As I've also said, a lot of this falls on letowski but you get a letter for a reason and they didn't meet those expectations on a regular basis.