vadim sharifijanov
Registered User
the tragedy of the benning era, beyond wasting years of our lives, is that he had the once-in-a-lifetime core of a franchise goalie, franchise d, and true number one center, all young and cost-controlled, and he completely wasted it.
so those pieces are all still here, plus miller has exceeded all expectations and become a second all-star-level number one center. this is the perfect nucleus to build around (like kopitar, doughty, quick) and we may never ever see a core like this again. so throwing away a season of that to tank or reload should be out of the question. as long as there’s a chance that demko can be healthy, miller and petey can play to their potential, and hughes continues to be hughes, you have to go for it. you don’t mortgage the future to load up if you’re staring down major question marks (as we currently are), but you can never trade away the present. which means, among other things, boeser stays, to say nothing not trading miller or petey for anything less than a true number one center (i.e., not an elias lindholm) back, and i don’t think anybody is going to trade us one.
i think i pointed this out at the beginning of the year, but to me this feels a lot like the ’94 season. the ’93 season was a huge success and almost everything went right, although it ended on a sour note against LA in the playoffs. but in that offseason, we lost a lot of depth. because of expansion, we lost doug lidster on D and anatoli semenov and garry valk up front. also gone was sandlak, who was traded in the kron for craven deal the previous year but due to shenanigans we got to keep him for the playoffs before he went to hartford as “future considerations” in the summer, and nedved, who was holding out. dixon ward sophomore slumped badly and eventually was traded for jimmy carson’s corpse because we needed someone, anyone, who could play center.
that all looks kind of minor in comparison to losing zadorov, lindholm, cole, plus the injuries we’ve sustained so far, but that really decimated the team. without nedved and semenov, the top nine only had one natural center, cliff ronning, and for depth reasons we played bure on a line with gino for large stretches. and with diduck hurt for stretches, a lot of times our bottom three on D were slegr, robert dirk, and adrian plavsic.
but what happened then could happen again, and that’s not an opportunity we can ever give up as long as we have quinn hughes and a goalie who when hot can win any series all by himself. we hung around all year at the edge of a playoff spot and then all of a sudden nedved was traded for brown and hedican, and diduck was healthy for the playoffs, and we never saw slegr, plavsic, or dirk ever again (dirk was traded at the deadline to recoup a mid-round draft pick). we picked up brian glynn on waivers, solidifying our depth, which ended up being needed when murzyn got hurt in the first round. we also got gelinas on waivers and lafayette as the third piece in the nedved trade, and they plugged important holes in the top nine. mclean caught fire, linden played the hockey of his life, and bure was bure, the blueline gelled, other guys got hot, and we came within a couple goals of winning it all.
if guys (especially demko) get healthy, we can add a couple quality blueline pieces before the deadline, willander is able to credibly step in, and miller and petey get on the rolls they can, this is potentially a 2011 level team.
so those pieces are all still here, plus miller has exceeded all expectations and become a second all-star-level number one center. this is the perfect nucleus to build around (like kopitar, doughty, quick) and we may never ever see a core like this again. so throwing away a season of that to tank or reload should be out of the question. as long as there’s a chance that demko can be healthy, miller and petey can play to their potential, and hughes continues to be hughes, you have to go for it. you don’t mortgage the future to load up if you’re staring down major question marks (as we currently are), but you can never trade away the present. which means, among other things, boeser stays, to say nothing not trading miller or petey for anything less than a true number one center (i.e., not an elias lindholm) back, and i don’t think anybody is going to trade us one.
i think i pointed this out at the beginning of the year, but to me this feels a lot like the ’94 season. the ’93 season was a huge success and almost everything went right, although it ended on a sour note against LA in the playoffs. but in that offseason, we lost a lot of depth. because of expansion, we lost doug lidster on D and anatoli semenov and garry valk up front. also gone was sandlak, who was traded in the kron for craven deal the previous year but due to shenanigans we got to keep him for the playoffs before he went to hartford as “future considerations” in the summer, and nedved, who was holding out. dixon ward sophomore slumped badly and eventually was traded for jimmy carson’s corpse because we needed someone, anyone, who could play center.
that all looks kind of minor in comparison to losing zadorov, lindholm, cole, plus the injuries we’ve sustained so far, but that really decimated the team. without nedved and semenov, the top nine only had one natural center, cliff ronning, and for depth reasons we played bure on a line with gino for large stretches. and with diduck hurt for stretches, a lot of times our bottom three on D were slegr, robert dirk, and adrian plavsic.
but what happened then could happen again, and that’s not an opportunity we can ever give up as long as we have quinn hughes and a goalie who when hot can win any series all by himself. we hung around all year at the edge of a playoff spot and then all of a sudden nedved was traded for brown and hedican, and diduck was healthy for the playoffs, and we never saw slegr, plavsic, or dirk ever again (dirk was traded at the deadline to recoup a mid-round draft pick). we picked up brian glynn on waivers, solidifying our depth, which ended up being needed when murzyn got hurt in the first round. we also got gelinas on waivers and lafayette as the third piece in the nedved trade, and they plugged important holes in the top nine. mclean caught fire, linden played the hockey of his life, and bure was bure, the blueline gelled, other guys got hot, and we came within a couple goals of winning it all.
if guys (especially demko) get healthy, we can add a couple quality blueline pieces before the deadline, willander is able to credibly step in, and miller and petey get on the rolls they can, this is potentially a 2011 level team.
Last edited:
