I thought this was the Brassard-Zibby trade thread.
Anyways, I wrote this more than a week ago but didn't have time to post it before my vacation trip. so here it goes.
I'm extremely happy with this move. I think he's an improvement on Turris or at least just as good. I like the fact that he's a playmaker, I like the fact that he's LH, something we desperately needed in our top 6 and I like the fact that he's got playoffs experience and seems to be a clutch player, another thing we desperately needed.
I was surprised to see that he's 6'1" 205. I never thought of him as a big guy or a physical player but he does rack up more than 100 hits every season. Zibby gets more hits but considering his size, he's not what I would call a physical player either. Still, Brassard is less hesitant to go to the dirty areas, plays with more drive and passion.
Brassard might be the 2nd best playmaking centre we ever had after Jason Spezza. Back in junior, he was a pass machine setting up Guillaume Latendresse. I am really hoping GB plays him with Ryan early so they can develop some chemistry and get Ryan to play like a scoring winger again.
I'm just going to copy paste what I thought about Zibby-Ryan just before the trade.
If Bobby Ryan had a playmaking centre, he would score a lot more goals. We don't have a player like Getzlaf here ( we had Spezza but the Spezza-Ryan combo was never really tried in 2014). He played with Turris and Mac all year that season and I still believe that playing with them is his best chance to score 30. Unless, he somehow moves to the LW and plays with our best passer Stone. Something like Ryan-Turris-Stone.
Ryan is a very smart hockey player that can adapt his play depending on his line mates. Playing with Hoffman and Zibby, he has to be the playmaker, the passer. He will never reach 30 goals again playing with two shoot-first type of guys. Just look at his goal-assist ratio between Anaheim and Ottawa. His game has changed and it's because 1-he's not playing with two of the best players in the world and 2- his two linemates are shoot-first players.
I think Zibanejad is good enough to be a #2 centre if you have a legitimate #1 centre, but in our situation where the team has two #1B centres, I don't think he's good enough to make us a contender. Let's put it this way. When we look at the past few SC winners, only Boston did not have at least 1 elite centre. Like us, they had two #1B centres but they also had a great system, something that I'm hoping improves with Boucher. I still believe Zibby would be better on the LW, playing on his onetimer side and hopefully, the #2 slot gets filled by someone with better vision.
Some people may take my comment about Zibby as a knock on him, no it’s just reality. He’s not a playmaking centre, he's not Ryan Getzlaf, he’s a shooting centre. He’s got very little vision, he doesn’t like to keep the puck, he’s not the one entering the zone with the puck, he’s good at going to the net without the puck… like a winger would do. We all know what Hoffman can do so how the hell is Ryan supposed to score 25-30 when his two line mates are shoot-first type of guys?
Play Ryan with Turris and his goal production will go up.
Honestly, I couldn't be happier with this trade. Dorion did real good here.
For all the skill and potential people say Zibby has, I just don't see him becoming an elite #1 centre. I was also surprised to learn that the NYR score the same amount of goals than us last year, but I doubt he's going to play with better players than Hoffman and Ryan. Zucharello is a very smart hockey player but Zibby will nullify a lot of his creativity. On the other hand, I think Brassard's IQ will make his line mates better and our PP more lethal.