whut?
three known's in Bergeron, krejci and Kelley equal one and half unknown's in Bergeron Soderberg Spooner?
How do you see those two different sets of center's as 'similar'?
yeah, it would be great if Soderberg is equal to or better than he was last year, but that's your 'half' known quantity, he doesn't have a track record in the NHL yet to say with any certainty, and Spooner is 100% of an unknown.
I don't know how much of "unknown" we could call Soderberg, we've seen his skillset at both wing and center, on the power play, and with multiple linemates.
I mean at one point Savard was newly acquired, Krejci was a kid in the AHL, and Bergeron hadn't played hockey in a year. Unknown does not equal bad. Known does not equal good.
I believe that Soderberg has all the tools to step into a top 6 role and play as effectively as Krejci has. Soderberg's point per minute rate(.0461) was higher than Krejci's(.045) this year and in his usual 62 point seasons(.043), while playing with significantly worse linemates than Krejci did/has. Now...I understand that he's not drawing the same D matchups that Krejci drew this year, but the linemate difference at least in my opinion offsets that.
Spooner is definitely unknown at the NHL level. He came up, scored at a 41 point pace, but definitely had things to work on. No different than when Krejci came up his first time....but he's clearly outgrown the AHL game and dominated the playoffs down there. There would absolutely be growing pains, not saying there wouldn't be, but I believe in his ability as an NHL player.
I think Kelly is unknown as well. Do you know what we are going to get from him? I don't. Starting out the 2013-14 season with Kelly as a center, after the year he had and the first half he had was a "known" that I wouldn't want to experience and/or call a "pillar of strength." He was awful in 2013 and struggled hard the first half of this last season.
This also doesn't dive into what the potential return for Krejci would be, which would also be strong I would have to assume.
All I'm saying is I don't believe that if in this hypothetical situation you deal Krejci, you're knocking out pillars of center strength. It's completely possible to deal David Krejci and improve overall as a team, the same way it was possible for others in the past. I don't think overall it would be too far off what we've started the last two seasons with. Maybe that's over confidence in Soderberg? Hard to tell, but I think a Lucic-Soderberg-Loui line would be a damn good 2nd line if Loui breaks the downward trend and gets back to his pre-lockout days.
*Disclaimer because everyone reads everything completely wrong and takes any discussion to the fullest extreme, no where in this thread have I said I
want to trade David Krejci*