First off, I've defended King quite a bit on here, so I don't even know who or what you are mistaking me for. I'm also aware of his deficiencies and how ineffective he can be when he gets away from playing a heavy game, which is exactly what happened to him last season.
And are you not paying attention as to why some of us are keen to the idea of Martin over King? We're not talking about offensive production, we're talking about playing that heavy, hard hitting game that throws opponents for a loop.
Did anyone on the bottom six do that last season? I'm talking about a guy like Tom Wilson who will make opponents be on alert. That's what Matt Martin brings and something that has gotten away from the supposed physical wingers on this team.
No, I'm reading all that just fine and agreeing that
in his role he's very effective. I'm railing against the idea--no it wasn't you, but you were defending it--that Martin > King. Martin is exclusively a 4th liner; King rotates all over the lineup because he has the ability. No he SHOULDNT be near the top six, but its much less disastrous if he is than if Martin is. King is underratedly skilled and flexible and a good all around player who is not a liability.
I guess more than anything what i"m saying is people rail against guys like Clifford and King moving around the lineup, then I come here and see Martin > BOTH, and I'm wondering aloud why in the world anyone would buy that, especially when he's likely to get paid 1.5x more than both. There are very few statistics that back it up. Hits is about it. Stupid penalties? He's got that in spades too.
Again, grass is always greener.
Tampa Bay , Florida , Washington, Winnipeg, Isles, Pittsburgh , San Jose , St.Louis just a few teams who have speed and skill in their bottom 6 who actually score goals and have few 35-40 pt players . They are also not a liability getting dangled by and giving up quality chances.
Once you contain our top 2 lines we are done . Im all for being positive but eventually youll change your tune.
It's exactly what I said above, and I"m not digging through my posting history to get the stats because I did this examination before--those teams have 'bottom sixers' with 30-40 points because they have guys who play top six AND bottom six, getting most of their points with top sixers. It would be like if D. Brown got 50 points last season and we said "look how productive our bottom sixers are" when really he got 40 points with Kopitar.
I'll put it this way, because I don't disagree with your whole premise--a lot of those teams have a 'top 7' in a way, a top six with the depth to miscast a skill guy down the lineup, and then rotate those parts around. We did the same, but the problem was guys like Brown, Lewis, King didn't actually score. I don't think those guys are inherently less skilled than, say, Grabovski, but last season, it didn't work. That's fine, let's get some more skill there, but let's not pretend bottom sixers around the league are lighting it up, because the vast majority of them aren't scoring much more than the Kings believe it or not.
And, to point out how those teams got that scoring depth? Every example I can think of is a cheap internal guy coming up or signing of rights--think Donskoi, Sheary/Rust, etc. So going OUTSIDE for those signings help is actually counterintuitive to what many are looking for. For us, that might look like Dowd helping at the beginning of the year and a Mersch/Kempe coming up near the deadline like King/Nolan.
