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 Adam
Messages: 6824
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB
6 Cups
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| WhoreableGuy wrote on Wed, 04 December 2019 11:11 |
Spector and Stauffer were talking on CHED yesterday about which UFA you would rather go after, Taylor Hall or JG Pageau and both said Pageau and I would have to agree. Solid 3rd line center, would be a hell of a lot cheaper than the winger Hall.
Pageau is having a great year, plus 19 on a really bad Sens team. That's unreal.
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Pageau's career high was 43 points and that was four seasons ago. He's having a fantastic season with the Sens this year and may exceed that number, but A) he's playing up the lineup because the Sens are pretty awful and B) this may just be a heater.
There's an Oilers-related comparable to discuss here - Todd Marchant scored 60 points in his final season with the Oilers. He was a free agent to be, the Oilers had traded away Weight and Comrie battled injuries so Marchant was, for much of the season, the top line center playing with Ryan Smyth and Anson Carter. He got a tonne more PP time than he had at any point in his career and posted 19 powerplay points. That was by far the most in his NHL career.
Pageau hasn't had the same PP success but he has had the first line push. He wouldn't get that here, and he'd see a big decrease in the opportunities - less O-zone starts, worse linemates, less chances. You could expect his stats to take a steep drop.
If he has a 50 point year though, someone will pay him based on that - which is probably a mistake.
Compare that to Hall - who people are concerned is having a down season at 22 points in 27 games. Well over a point per game the two seasons prior to this one. Great 5v5 production as well as PP production. He would make the team significantly better on offence, and we'd be able to push a winger from the second line to the third and from the third to the fourth and from the fourth to the pressbox. That will make three lines stronger.
I would absolutely take both players on my team, and if the choice was Pageau or not Pageau then that's a no-brainer. But if both have semi-reasonable salary expectations and both are interested and we can only pick one? Taylor Hall is the much better player and is more likely to make us closer to a championship team by adding him.
Look at it this way - if you are a GM of a team on the cusp of being a contender in the mid-2000s could add one of Hossa or Marchant, which would you pick? Both won Cups in the second half of that decade, but Hossa clearly was the bigger contributor to his team's successes.
It is of course, no surprise that Spector and Stauffer get this wrong though.
"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireLowe #FireBobbyNicks #FireKenHolland #FireKeithGretzky
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