If you reserve the term PF for guys like prime Lucic, there is of course no debating this. Think that like one of the first thing I made clear in my responses in that thread was that I meant as a energy winger who did some of the dirty work for his linemates and threw his body around.
As to McIlrath, he was certainly not some pure stay at home D — in the WHL. That was of course the style he projected to have in the NHL, but he played almost exclusively as the No 3 D for his team in juniors. I think we had some hopes at least of him taking rapid steps after we drafted him. But that didn’t happen. Honestly, I have a hard time figuring out how this could even be a discussion we are having? Facts are facts, he had a 2nd pairing role, played 2nd pairing PP time and even some on the first, and he definitely had ambitions to assume bigger roles. If anything, lol, his defense was a bit all over the place while he was a junior.
Honestly, there were no debating these issues back then and there are definitely none today so I’ll leave it at this. Think those quotes speaks for themselves and the best argument I’ve seen made against them was that they were several years after the fact, which in fact was false since they were made three months after the McD trade.