Taylor Hall For Adam Larsson V | 4,000+ Posts and Counting!

[nabob]

Playing top pair on a weak defensive team doesn't mean he is a true top 2 dman. We should all know this by now as so many oilers dman have played above their means.

Epic troll fail. New Jetsey has consistently been the best defensive team in the league for 25 years. Larsson was, in the opinion of their fans and people in the know (not you) to be the best part of that defense last season.

 

[CupofOil]

Both seabrook and vlasic are significantly better dman than Larsson. By my standards i consider both top 2 because they "do it all" Larsson doesnt.

Vlasic, that "do it all" defenseman has been a 20-25 point player throughout most of his career yet he was still good enough to be named to Team Canada and was widely considered leaguewide as a #1 Dman. The point being that you don't need to put up big points to be considered a #1 Dman. I prefer a premier shutdown Dman to an offensive Dman personally. Those guys are gold in big games. No guarantees of course that Larsson becomes a Vlasic level Dman but he's certainly trending in that direction.

Playing top pair on a weak defensive team doesn't mean he is a true top 2 dman. We should all know this by now as so many oilers dman have played above their means.

Now you're providing fallacies to push your agenda, perhaps in desperation? Everybody knows that the Devils were one of the strongest defensive units in the league last season. Schneider certainly played a part but that team locked down opponents on the regular with the Greene-Larsson pairing playing a huge part in that. Believing anything else is being dishonest.

 

[Replacement*]

The problem people are having here is they equate good "Top 2" defenseman as those who score points, as if that's all a defenseman is supposed to do. We see this with Norris voting, and the polarizing Weber/Subban trade where Weber is the superior defenseman (you know, the one who stops goals from going in) but Subban is more popular because he rushes like a 4th forward. Ditto Karlsson where he sacrifices defensive play in order to pad stats.

Likely the same thought pattern is present here, where people think Larsson is some bottom pairing dud because he doesn't light the lamp. Many here are banking on the fact that because he was on a offensively challenged team, they we may see him "unleash" his offensive prowess on us.

Doubtful that's gonna happen and it's best you all come to grips with that. We're still in the hunt for an offensive defenseman. But what we have in Larsson is a top tier defenseman who stops goals from happening and anchors our defensive corp. This is a huge thing for the Oilers and something they haven't had since Pronger.

Larsson is gonna be an amazing addition so long as people stop equating good defenseman as goal scorers.

I equate elite Top pairing D to be either capable of putting up a lot of offense or they are physical man mountains that can stop any oncoming trains. Larsson is neither of these.

From all reports I'm reasonably satisfied Larsson will be good with the puck. i'm not as confident he's going to be as good without the puck in the WC where winning puck battles against giant redwood forwards is very unlike the typical action found in the EC. Indeed this is been Sekera's main struggle here not realizing the forecheck in WC is quick and deadly. Its a whole other game for D in this conference. If You can be a top D in this conference you can do it anywhere.

 

[ohheyhemsky]

No idea of this was already posted, but

 

[Ol' Jase]

Playing top pair on a weak defensive team doesn't mean he is a true top 2 dman. We should all know this by now as so many oilers dman have played above their means.

Weak defensive team, huh?

Quite the falsehood you're using to try and strengthen your argument.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Over 1000 posts in this thread and 5000 total on the subject. I think that everyone has had a chance to make their opinion known, it's time to move on.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Bump so that it doesn't get lost

 

[Slats432]

Hall was a healthy scratch yesterday. We won the deal.