I know I'm just a sunbelt plebeian but it doesn't make sense to me for a team that rolls its lines to not put a 2nd overall drafted center on at least the 3rd line as center.
Seguin's time in Boston seems to be summed up pretty easily: talented center drafted into atypical circumstances gets played on the wing but to the surprise of nobody he doesn't play a winger's game. Cue the trade and all of the hoopla surrounding it.
I'm with piqued. If an elite player falls into your lap you help mold them, you nurture them, you try to understand them as a person, and have faith that it pays off down the line. Maybe that happened in Boston and Seguin couldn't hear the coaches over the sounds of the club music resonating in his ears, who knows.
They did play him at center when Bergeron was injured last year and he was a disaster. You're discrediting the disparage between the type of system the Bruins run and the one that the Stars run. I don't know if you've ever played hockey and are familiar with that kind of thing, but it makes a big difference. I don't expect you to know every little intricate detail about the Bruins' system, either, because obviously you don't watch all of their games. But they tried him at center and it didn't work for them, he is a good defensive player for an offensive guy, but he's not responsible enough defensively to play center for the Bruins. It doesn't mean that he doesn't try, or that he doesn't work hard, or that he's too drunk, it just means that's not his game.
As far as drafting him, that was a 2 person race between him and Hall. Not a single team would've drafted anyone else in those two spots, they took the best player available and he helped them win the Stanley Cup, so it was the right pick. They wanted Hall and even tried trading up for him as rumors suggest, but apparently Edmonton asked for too much. It's an interesting thing to look back on, because the fit for Hall in Boston is so much better as a winger, especially with the muck and grease that Hall plays with, and the fit for Seguin in Edmonton would be so much better as they'd get a potential franchise guy at maybe the most important position. I'm not sold on RNH being that guy for them, he's good, but Seguin's better.
But I wouldn't change anything since it helped win the Bruins the Cup. Would they have won it with Hall? I don't know, but I wouldn't change it. It's just interesting to think about.
Even if he wasn't bad at center for them, he was not going to be a center for the Bruins, with Krejci and Bergeron ahead of him. And there's no point in paying a 3rd line center 6 million, it would handcuff your lines. I think the Bruins did nurture and mold him as much as they possibly could. They turned him into a pretty damn good defensive player for an offensive guy.
I'm not going to speculate on what happened, but whatever it was, they had seen enough. The story about the security guard outside his room in the Toronto series is fact, and came out before Seguin was even traded. That wasn't a smear campaign. After that he clearly got the message because he was better for the rest of the playoffs after that series, but maybe by then it was the last straw? We know about the thing in Winnipeg with his "watch" being mis set because of the timezones, even though that was clearly the Bruins trying to sweep it under the rug because if his watch was mis set because of the time zone, he would've woken up an hour early and not late, but whatever.
Like I said, I do believe the partying stuff is overblown and I think the reason for the trade is just as much on ice stuff as much as it is off ice. Because if a guy plays the way you want him to and produces, then you will do whatever you have to do to put up with and work with whatever is going on off the ice. And all of you have said there hasn't been a trace of any of that in his time in Dallas, and good for him. If that trade woke him up and got him to re-evaluate himself and his career and what he wants to be, then good for him and good for you. I just trust Peter Chiarelli's judgment when he says he's seen enough. They did everything they could with him in Boston, and they chose to go in a different direction.
