And yet, you are still wrong. Don't whine for respect. Earn it. You griped about something that I never said ("MDZ is exceptional now?") and then proceeded to imply that I was "in love with" and "enamored" of a player, causing bias. You mis-read (intentionally or otherwise) what I wrote and then tried to throw it in my face. You invited disrespect, and frankly, I held back a bit.
Feel free to go find one of my earlier posts where I already posted the numbers, but the reality is this: Most of the current top PMDs in the league had done nothing, nothing by the age of 23. Yeah, there are a few here and there, but where we draft? We aren't going to get that guy who is a fully developed superstar by the age of 23. Development takes time.
So you can whine all you want about feeling disrespected, and you can think that you're something special with your "through two lockouts" nonsense (for what it's worth, I've been following this team since the mid-80s). It doesn't change the fact that thinking that a 23 year old with solid defense and a 35 point career average is a player to "cut bait" on is idiotic. THAT thinking, which goes back well before 2005, is what caused the dark ages. That thinking is why we developed guys like Marc Savard, Tony Amonte, Doug Weight, etc etc etc, only to watch them become top players somewhere else.
Yeah, he's been here for five years. That doesn't change the fact that he's still learning and growing. His best years are ahead of him, and trading him for players whose best years don't exist is the height of Ranger stupidity (a special brand of stupidity trademarked in the late 90s, early aughts).
