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Are this season's UFA centres worth it?


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None taken :) I enjoyed the read!

the point of the 93 habs and the Anaheim roster is plain to see what do we need to make a cup contender team... do we need solid Defense (like Anaheim and The 93 habs? and the best goalie in the league to become contenders?

or/and we need the solid scoring lines..??/

because we could state we should render the goalie situation and the D through trades and UFA... and leave the top two lines with the players coming from our system? and over seas scouting?

That sounds like the plan Gainey and co. have for next year already. Lahti is the key for us really.

There is no way he agreed to come over here and end up or start in hamilton. Odds are that he will be playing with Saku on the first line (I think I smell the end of Ryder in Montreal anyway) so someone will have to move from the first line to the third line (2nd is basicall set with Kost-higgy-and pleks) and since Ryder probably has the most trade value right now he would be the one on the outs (others have too big of contracts to move easily eg, Kovalev, Sammy etc)

If Lahti can perform anywhere near as good as he did last season in europe we would finally have some chemistry on the top lines and scoring through the top 3 lines without even knowing who is on the fourth line yet.

If Lahti fails to impress (which I would bet money on him hitting 25 goals minimum for us) he will end up floating for the season like Streit did until he was comfortable.

Although there are no guarentees for Lahti's production, he really opens up alot of new angles for us if he does produce.

As for having the Ducks being a blueprint for our success, I think it would be a mistake. We have to build a team that will make it through the Eastern conference and not worry at all about the west. who knows, maybe Buffalo would have beaten the Ducks if they were in the finals.

I think the points is that the Ducks played their game in the finals and Ottawa couldn't make the Ducks play the game that Ottawa plays so they were left trying to catch up and figure out thier style. No matter what you have to make the other team play your style so the are kept off balance.

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Good discussion...the Ducks win is sending shockwaves around the league, since they are so clearly an 'old' NHL team, built around defence, toughness and grit and a willingness to take penalties, along with enough offensive punch to capitalize on chances. That, plus the officiating suddenly returned back to the 'old NHL' style for significant chunks of the Finals. I expect a but of a retreat from the Buffalo model, unfortunately. (On the other hand, you could argue that the NHL is dividing up into two clearly different styles: the 'Anaheim' model in the west and the 'Buffalo' model in the east).

But there's the thing. The Ottawa Senators simply did not show up for the finals. They clearly read their own press clippings during the layoff and underestimated the Ducks; and by the time Heatly and Spezza, in particular, realized the urgency of the situation, they were down 2-0 and reeling. I think inexperience in Ottawa's key players was a big issue.

So I think it would be wrong to infer that the 'Anaheim' model MUST beat the 'Ottawa' model. The problem was less Ottawa's style than their collective psyche; and a four-line team like Buffalo might well have given the Ducks a much harder time.

It would be too hard to reconstruct the Habs along Ducks lines anyway: we seem to be emerging as a Buffalo-style team with lots of speed and depth - no point in changing horses in midstream.

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