Utah may very well be desperate for high-end D-men, and they have one player that Buffalo seriously lacks the caliber of - Crouse. I see a trade partner for sure, and maybe it could be a case (for once) that Buffalo can be trading from a position of strength with a team that is more on the desperate side.
I'm pretty adamant about giving him more time, patience paid off with Dahlin and it will for Owen. He's too good for it not to happen, but yes there's parts of his game we'd like to see more of.
This has been falling on deaf ears around here, he's terrible defensively and terrible in the faceoff circle, he's not exactly the 3C we need.
Tage isn't exactly a world beater defensively or at the dot, just sayin, its not the be all end all if he can drive a secondary scoring line offensively, and perhaps show some improvement in those areas. Cozens will doing a lot more matchup heavy lifting this year, Don't care which one you call the '2c' or '3c'. Add a 'defensive' 4c too and I don't see it as much of a huge problem perhaps as others. But we're probably getting ahead of ourselves at this point. Maybe he'd be a huge fail there, maybe not idk.
I can’t find anything saying he is leaving because he wants to play center - I saw that he’s leaving because he wants a bigger role.
I agree for the most part. I tried to note in my OP on OP that I think he's obviously a good player with a bunch of ceiling still.
For other things we need? Because we might need them more?
I think the leak about NJ offering #10 is more about leveraging other teams. I don’t think he makes much else for New Jersey so I’d be surprised if they were actually offering that.
He brings many more years of NHL experience which is important for the youngest team in the league.
Jeff Skinner has beat him in points, goal totals either tied or more in every season except this last one, so Skinner at age 30 and 31 was a more dynamic offensive players than Necas entering his prime on a stacked team.
McGroarty plays a physical game, he's good around boards and the net, he's a versatile and smart player who seems NHL-ready. In fact, he ticks a lot of boxes.
Given how Adams talked about how long he had been trying to get a D like Byram, I would be shocked if he traded him out this soon.
The thing is we don't need more of the same with Tage at center when it comes to faceoffs or not being stout defensively, we need centers that can bolster Tage by taking heavy DZone minutes, you can't just rely on Cozens to do that alone. I'm not trying to dump on Tage because he has gotten better defensively and wasn't terrible on the PK whereas Necas is terrible at both of those things.
He remains a wild card to me. Because he is almost unknown and even Avs fans can't really say anything. He is decent at FO, but weak on defense. They didn't trust him on PK and PP. As they said, he is an average 3C in the league. Maybe it could work, but then someone like Benson would have to cover him.
Ross Colton and Mangiapane would be my trade targets for sure. Both play with energy, Colton is exactly what we need at 3C, high energy and bang the body would work real good with Benson I would think and Mangiapane is strong defensively and can score 40 to 50 points. Pair him with Cozen and Quinn and watch that line become absolutely shut down with an offensive bite. Did you see Mangiapane with Cozens for team Canada?
