News Article: Scott Gomez, worst trade of the year?

[macavoy]

I heard him say he doesn't care about point totals, winning is what matters. Now its time for him to live up to his word.

[koivu]

yeah enough with the friggin points, why is it so important to automatically take a guy's salary and divide it by the # of regular season points he gets to get his value?

its such a antiquated measure of a players value. 55 points he should get $3 million, 65 points he should get...

right now Gomez is the best forward we have. PERIOD.

[Em Ancien]

Originally Posted by koivu

yeah enough with the friggin points, why is it so important to automatically take a guy's salary and divide it by the # of regular season points he gets to get his value?

its such a antiquated measure of a players value. 55 points he should get $3 million, 65 points he should get...

right now Gomez is the best forward we have. PERIOD.

Plekanec outplayed him this season. I'd argue Gionta is a better forward.

But that's besides the point. You have a number 2 center consuming elite player cap space. How can anyone actually think it doesn't matter unless they're cap-retarded?

[smon]

Points are "antiquated" measures ...?

Wow, guess someone forgot to tell everyone talking about Sedin winning the Art Ross or Stamkos, Ovechkin and Crosby trying to get the Richard.

Anyhow, let me know when you convince everyone around professional hockey to never talk about points or stats in general.

[Kensai Akatsume Ryu]

Originally Posted by smon

Points are "antiquated" measures ...?

Wow, guess someone forgot to tell everyone talking about Sedin winning the Art Ross or Stamkos, Ovechkin and Crosby trying to get the Richard.

Anyhow, let me know when you convince everyone around professional hockey to never talk about points or stats in general.

Joe Thorton is a regular season points leader. Do I need to say more?

[Em Ancien]

Originally Posted by Kensai Akatsume Ryu

Joe Thorton is a regular season points leader. Do I need to say more?

But if he produced points in the post-season like he does in the regular season, would anyone be talking about him in a bad way?

No. So it's still about points.

[peicurler91]

I noticed that it doesn't go in order from worst to best (of the worst)

It goes in order from earliest to most recent. Toronto Made 2 bad trades, Kessel and Phaneuf, and 3 bad moves (the 2 trades and hiring Burke)

[habsjunkie2*]

Originally Posted by Kensai Akatsume Ryu

Joe Thorton is a regular season points leader. Do I need to say more?

Joe Thornton is as close to a superstar as you can get without actually being one. I'm not sure of your point, but SJ failures are not the fault of big Joe.

[Frozenice]

Originally Posted by peicurler91

I noticed that it doesn't go in order from worst to best (of the worst)

It goes in order from earliest to most recent. Toronto Made 2 bad trades, Kessel and Phaneuf, and 3 bad moves (the 2 trades and hiring Burke)

I will be surprised if Montreal does better than Toronto next year during the regular season.

I don't like a lot of the deals Burke makes but in the end the Leafs will be a better team because he makes enough good deals that it overshadows the bad ones. The Leafs may very well never win the Stanley Cup because of the deals Burke made but they will be a to field a competitive team that has the potential to go far in the playoffs while we're stuck being a bubble team.

[MathMan]

Originally Posted by Frozenice

I will be surprised if Montreal does better than Toronto next year during the regular season.

I'll be shocked if the Leafs beat out the Habs next year. I don't think Burke has made one deal yet that has made his team stronger, except the Giguere deal. The Kessel team did in the short term obviously, but that looks like it may backfire too.

In particular I'm not impressed with their D unit, and that's before Burke goes through with his plan of crippling it by dealing Kaberle.

[Frozenice]

Originally Posted by MathMan

I'll be shocked if the Leafs beat out the Habs next week. I don't think Burke has made one deal yet that has made his team stronger, except the Giguere deal. The Kessel team but that looks like it may backfire too.

In particular I'm not impressed with their D unit, and that's before Burke goes through with his plan of crippling it by dealing Kaberle.

If he trades Kaberle for something and he signs a free agent for nothing Burke gains on the transaction. If Toronto gets Bozak for nothing and trades Stajan for something in time these kind of deals add up to something significant.

That is the opposite of how we operate and it is why you have such a dearth of talent on this team. We lose Koivu and Kovalev for nothing and we pay to get Lang, Schneider and Gomez. If we had signed Gaborik and traded him to the Rangers for Gomez and a defense prospect that is how a team can build through trading. Even if it is a bad trade it is better than the way we operate.

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Now to Phaneuf,

In the NHL it is harder to notice when a guy gets dinged really good and he is not quite right but I've noticed many times in the CFL when a player goes to the NFL and gets dinged really good (spinal compression, nervous system damage) they release him and he finds his way back to the CFL and he isn't quite right. It takes a year or two for the player to recover to his normal self.

A lot of times it seems like the brain inhibits full athletic prowess and only through time and practice does the mind get back up to speed. The brain has inhibiting mechanisms built into it and once they are activated it takes time for them to reset.

Exampoles of what I'm talking about are CFL guys like Albert Johnson III, Ricky Ray and where the strange got even stranger, Casey Printers.

I expect Phaneuf to play a lot better by the end of next season, to me at the start of this year there was something not right about him - disorientated, head in a cloud kind of thing.