I'm not sure why it's so hard for Sens fans to grasp that one guy is a quality 1C and the other is a middle of the decent 2C. Heaven forbid that another team has a player that is better than a guy on your team.
Duchene is better than any center the Sens have. That's not me over-rating, it's just the cold hard facts.
Did you ever stop and say well maybe one guy is drawing the other teams top dmen and shutdown lines every single night when the other guy is getting the opportunity to play against other teams 2nd pairing guys and not best defensive line? I guarantee that if Zibby had to go against other teams top units every single night he wouldn't be having as nice of stats.
And Duchene realistically was more than a few points ahead of Zibby last season. Almost 15 points better if you give Duchene the points he was on pace for while injured. He was on pace for 65 points in a full season. Zibby got to play all but one game and scored 51.
staying healthy is important, and until duhene can do that, i have a hard time considering him a quality #1 center. is he a number one center? yes. a quality one? i don't believe so.
is duchene a better center than anyone on our roster? yes. turris is pretty close, but he hasn't proven enough for me to make an argument out of it. i'll just say he was on pace for 68 points before he got a high ankle sprain (which he played through). no telling if he would have made that total, but since we're using paces for duchene
before you try to use turris' injury against one of my main arguments against duchene, when we shut turris down for the year, it ended his senators ironman streak of 307 games, which is five short of the franchise record. he's just not worth the cost for the senators to acquire. he's not enough of an upgrade over turris to make it worthwhile.
after we shut turris down for the year, zibanejad continued to score at a 51 point pace (with the same linemates). duchene is clearly (very clearly) a better player than zibanejad, but one is trending upwards and the other hasn't progressed much since his first few years. who knows what the future holds?
i still think duchene will end up being a better player than zibby, but like i said before, health is important. duchene hasn't played a full, healthy season since the lockout shortened season if you want to count that. since his second season if you don't count it.
zibanejad straight up for duchene has the value tilted in our favour quite a bit. due to other factors though, i'd have to think about it. money, potential, and proper team building (two small centers in the top six, plus the "5'10-on-his-best-days" pageau as the third line center) make me stop and think about it. i'd do it in the end, but it wouldn't be an instant "yes please i already sent the papers to the league so don't worry about it" kind of deal. adding ceci to the deal makes it a no-go. ceci finally got an nhl calibre partner when we got phaneuf and looked really, really good to end the year. no way i make that trade. the value is too far the other way.
like i said in my previous post in this thread, the avs have no reason to trade duchene for those two either. ceci is not what they want or need at this point. they'd be looking to make a johansen for jones type move if they move duchene. they would probably think about it, then give a polite but firm no.
tl;dr:
duchene is better than zibby (obviously), but not that big an upgrade over turris. duchene not healthy enough. zibby has really good potential. ceci too much to give up. trade doesn't make sense for either team. both teams so no for reasons.
