LTIR
Registered User
- Nov 8, 2013
- 27,973
- 15,177
Meh, Pettersson is the new Soucy.I think MP was the best player to commit to out of anyone in this UFA class. As good as Ekholm is today, he is 34 (soon to be 35) and will have an absolute ton of miles on his body come this summer with what is hopefully another deep playoff run.
Meanwhile Pettersson is only 28, a high-grade shutdown defender, yet still good at outletting the puck. He is that age where D tend to take another step forward and $5.5M is going to be absolutely nothing in a $100M cap world. He could have been our in-house Ekholm replacement, or at worst allowed us to ride Ek less.
We don't have anyone else in the system who profiles as a top pairing D... or even as a second pairing one on the left side. Ekholm breaking down is a very real concern and there are few options league-wide who can fill that hole. You're going to be spending $9M+ on those players in the future in FA. Hell, we pay that for Nurse to be a #3 today.
Add in that MP has played the right side a bit in the past, and I just don't understand us not making a move like this when it turned out how reasonable his extension ended up being. Our pro scouting is not good enough to unearth top four D on a whim, and our prospect pool is light on high potential D. At some point you have to be proactive about the future, but Jackson and Bowman haven't demonstrated they care about the next day never mind next year so I don't know where we go from here. We're running out of options which was exactly my worry a month ago when everyone was screaming to be "patient".
We were all drooling over that guy not too long ago and how he would round out our D.
Vancouver got a good deal but it's nothing to lose sleep over.