Quote:
Originally Posted by le_sean
That's great. I acknowledged the fact he's a very good player. But the stats you just gave describe the perfect 2nd line centre, not a 1st line centre.
The value is fair with the 3rd overall, but the Habs need to develop a 1st line player. In fact the team has Plekanec who is also the perfect 2nd line centre. Acquiring Jordan is not what the team needs.
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"Needs"...? Well, the team needs to get better. How many "1st line centres" are there in the league by your own subjective definition? 10? 15? If you can't get one of those, and if you're down to a draft where maybe you have 50/50 odds at best of getting and then (over the course of a few years at minimum) possibly developing one... well...
I'd take Jordan Staal. He may or may not be (or may or may not become) a "1st line centre" of the perennial All-Star point-per-game variety... but those are hard to come by, and hard to successfully draft and develop. But if you have 3 strong lines anchored by good "2nd line centers", then your team may still be fine. Staal, Plekanec, and the productive Desharnais line would strike me as great strength up the middle.
But again, the big drawback with Staal is his contract status. For the assets it would take to acquire him, I wouldn't dare do it with the risk that he's only on our team for 1 season.