Quote:
Originally Posted by The Mars Volchenkov
Lee has been playing 20+ minutes a game most nights and no one notices. For a defenseman, that's really not a bad thing. His physical game is improving, and he brings a dimension Ottawa needs with his skating and puck moving.
I don't doubt Murray will look to trade him this summer because he wasn't drafted by him, but it wouldn't kill the Sens to have more patience with him. Smid is proof, like many other young defensemen, that you need to be patient with defensemen. If someone steals him from the Sens this summer, they'll be very happy getting a top 4 defenseman for the next several years.
This is BS. Campoli is a bottom pairing defenseman. M. Karlsson might be a bottom pairing guy but has never played an NHL game. Erik Karlsson will be a top 4, tremendous offensive defenseman. Wiercioch is an all-around guy, but he's 18 years old and won't be in the NHL for a few years at least. Lee is an all-around defenseman who will be a top 4 defenseman for many years to come. To say that those guys fill the same role as Lee is a joke, and if they do, it's going to take even longer to wait for them. The Sens have used Lee in shut down situations with Phillips many times this year and he's done fine.
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Yes, lee has been great defensively this year, but he still leaves a lot to be desired in our end. He has no physicality whatsoever and is still prone to positioning mistakes. It's not like he's giving the puck away or anything, but his defensive game could be a lot better, and I'm sure it will be eventually.
I do honestly believe that a sens defense in '10-'11 consisting of philips, volchenkov, kuba, lee, karlsson, karlsson, and wiercioch will look very soft and may not be the best defense to run with in the playoffs. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with another shut-down D. If I was grading the two players, I'd give Lee a B+ offensively and a B- defensively, while i'd give Smid the reverse. I think it would benefit this team in the long run to trade lee's offensive skills for someone more defensive. Obviously, both players can work well at both ends of the ice, it's just a different focus.
As for the gleason/smokes trade and the schaeffer/salo trade: Schaeffer/Salo is one of the fairest trades I can think of in the past decade. The canucks had a ton of forwards at the time, and we had a logjam at defense. Salo was only really useful for his point shot, and we needed someone like schaeffer up front badly. Until 06-07, the trade was perfectly even. Gleason/Smolinski was also a good trade for us, as smolinski did serve as our 2nd line center for a few years. The only reason people bash this is because gleason went on to fetch Jack Johnson, but that had a lot more to do with the canes situation with Johnson, not gleason's value.