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[DISCUSSION] #1D or1C?


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It seems that at least 5 times a day on cdc, someone rants about how bad we need a true 1c prospect, or a #1d .

With next year being a very deep draft for both im curious to see what you guys think we need more.

I think after the draft this year, and are new found depth at centre, we need a 1d.

What do you guys think?

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IMO I think we're fine for centers. Horvat, Vey, McCann, Gaunce, Cassels, Matthias etc. will give us more than enough depth when they're in their prime. What we should focus on now is finding that future #1 defenceman, then we'd be set. Who knows, maybe we already have him.

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It's fine to have lots of depth up front with no clear-cut number one that is heads and tails above the rest. However, it is necessary to have a number one defenseman who can be relied upon in all situations and can eat up 30 minutes in important nights

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thanks for the friendly replies. i know were not gonna finish poorly this year, but would love to draft noah cant recall his last name from the usntdp. the guy has elite top end skillset and size

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I strongly believe that a good group of 6 d-men can win a cup, although having a Shea Weber type at the top would be amazing. I think a 1C is a little more important, but realistically, we have one in Henrik, and we don't know how Horvat, McCann, and especially Cassels will all pan out, and it's realistic one of them could be better than we think. Come draft day, I want the best player available wherever we will be picking.

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Right now we need a #1d. In fact that should be a priority for the GM. If that occurred the ripple affect in our defensive pairings would give us more help than if we had a #1C (not to mention that two years ago we had one of the best in the world in HSedin, who could still have a good year or two in him).

If we went for the centre that would also be awesome, but it would throw the forward line ups into turmoil - and we don't have the true #1 wingers to support him (unless we broke up the twins, but we all know that doesn't work well for long, and as with HS, DS may or may not have a top season left in him).

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I think we can win with Bonino, Vey, Horvat, Gaunce, etc as our young core ... Not as confident when I look at Tanev, Corrado Hutton Subban etc.

Forwards project to be good to solid 2nd-3rd liners similar to a few teams that have won in the past like Boston while we are hoping any of our dmen prospects after Corrado make the team at all. I think we need to bolster the D big time.

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#1 defenceman is more important. The last Stanley Cup Champions have all had a Norris-trophy worthy defenceman in their ranks going back until the Carolina Hurricanes won in 2006. In the playoffs, you simply need a big-minute eater who can shutdown opposing teams top line or two. Scoring depth is far more important in the playoffs than star power up front, but on the blueline quality is better than quantity and it's been proven time and time again.

Kings - Doughty

Blackhawks - Keith (Seabrook too)

Kings - Doughty

Bruins - Chara

Blackhawks - Keith (Seabrook)

Penguins - Letang (Orpik too)

Red Wings - Lidstrom (Rafalski too)

One thing all those teams had in common was a fantastic 1st defence pairing, especially a Norris-trophy nominee or winner. However, in terms of their forward groups, they didn't necessarily have scorers at over a point per game in the regular season. What they did all have were great two-way centers and great stars who could play well defensively (Kopitar, Toews, Bergeron, Zetterberg and even Crosby are all great offensively and defensively). Furthermore, all these teams had great depth at forward, often with 15-20 goal scorers on their 3rd lines who broke playoff games open.

Now if we compare this to the Canucks, we have not one of the 3 elements needed. In 2011, we had offensive depth but our 1st line couldn't play defence to save themselves (Sedins struggled in their own zone) which lead to our loss against the Bruins, but also the fact that we lacked that true top-5 NHL defenceman (Ehrhoff was our best bet as he was voted 9th in Norris voting but wasn't good enough).

Currently, and in our prospect pool looking forward, we do have Horvat, McCann, Gaunce and Matthias at center who are all fantastic two-way centers. Whether they can produce enough offence is yet to be seen, but they've shown to be great physically and defensively which is a GREAT sign. They clearly don't need to be able to score 90-100 points a season, as long as they score timely goals and play well defensively in the playoffs.

In terms of offensive depth, once our rookies come in we'll have the Sedins as third liners in a few years time. Depth is more of a GM move and Benning has to be willing to trade away prospects/picks who aren't ready when our team is ready for a Cup run for depth pieces (akin to the moves made to grab Higgins and Lapierre which gave us Cup-worthy offensive depth).

However, we are still lacking on the back-end. Edler may have peaked, he may be a late bloomer but it's hard to imagine he'll be a Norris trophy defenceman considering the quality of other D-men in this league. Tanev, Corrado and even Stanton are amazing young defencemen but they lack the offensive vision and pure talent of a Subban, Karlsson or Doughty that sees those guys playing 25-30 minutes a night in the playoffs and being a force at both ends. All of our prospects will be great top-4 defencemen capable of 20+ minutes, but we're missing a true elite talent on the blueline that the Cup winners (as shown above) all have.

I believe the Canucks should make a big play for a defenceman now while we have time to groom him before our contending years. We have plenty of good prospects and pieces to trade for one, so really should. We've got too many future 2C (Gaunce/Horvat/Matthias) so one of them could be traded. Markstrom is a given expendable, and we have a plethora of big physical prospects (Kassian, Virtanen, Jensen), with even defensive prospects at a high. A package like Gaunce, Corrado, Markstrom and maybe a current roster player like Jensen could be offered for one of those premium defencemen, especially a young one before they sign a long-term deal (eg. Hedman, Ekblad).

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#1 defenceman is more important. The last Stanley Cup Champions have all had a Norris-trophy worthy defenceman in their ranks going back until the Carolina Hurricanes won in 2006. In the playoffs, you simply need a big-minute eater who can shutdown opposing teams top line or two. Scoring depth is far more important in the playoffs than star power up front, but on the blueline quality is better than quantity and it's been proven time and time again.

Kings - Doughty

Blackhawks - Keith (Seabrook too)

Kings - Doughty

Bruins - Chara

Blackhawks - Keith (Seabrook)

Penguins - Letang (Orpik too)

Red Wings - Lidstrom (Rafalski too)

One thing all those teams had in common was a fantastic 1st defence pairing, especially a Norris-trophy nominee or winner. However, in terms of their forward groups, they didn't necessarily have scorers at over a point per game in the regular season. What they did all have were great two-way centers and great stars who could play well defensively (Kopitar, Toews, Bergeron, Zetterberg and even Crosby are all great offensively and defensively). Furthermore, all these teams had great depth at forward, often with 15-20 goal scorers on their 3rd lines who broke playoff games open.

Now if we compare this to the Canucks, we have not one of the 3 elements needed. In 2011, we had offensive depth but our 1st line couldn't play defence to save themselves (Sedins struggled in their own zone) which lead to our loss against the Bruins, but also the fact that we lacked that true top-5 NHL defenceman (Ehrhoff was our best bet as he was voted 9th in Norris voting but wasn't good enough).

Currently, and in our prospect pool looking forward, we do have Horvat, McCann, Gaunce and Matthias at center who are all fantastic two-way centers. Whether they can produce enough offence is yet to be seen, but they've shown to be great physically and defensively which is a GREAT sign. They clearly don't need to be able to score 90-100 points a season, as long as they score timely goals and play well defensively in the playoffs.

In terms of offensive depth, once our rookies come in we'll have the Sedins as third liners in a few years time. Depth is more of a GM move and Benning has to be willing to trade away prospects/picks who aren't ready when our team is ready for a Cup run for depth pieces (akin to the moves made to grab Higgins and Lapierre which gave us Cup-worthy offensive depth).

However, we are still lacking on the back-end. Edler may have peaked, he may be a late bloomer but it's hard to imagine he'll be a Norris trophy defenceman considering the quality of other D-men in this league. Tanev, Corrado and even Stanton are amazing young defencemen but they lack the offensive vision and pure talent of a Subban, Karlsson or Doughty that sees those guys playing 25-30 minutes a night in the playoffs and being a force at both ends. All of our prospects will be great top-4 defencemen capable of 20+ minutes, but we're missing a true elite talent on the blueline that the Cup winners (as shown above) all have.

I believe the Canucks should make a big play for a defenceman now while we have time to groom him before our contending years. We have plenty of good prospects and pieces to trade for one, so really should. We've got too many future 2C (Gaunce/Horvat/Matthias) so one of them could be traded. Markstrom is a given expendable, and we have a plethora of big physical prospects (Kassian, Virtanen, Jensen), with even defensive prospects at a high. A package like Gaunce, Corrado, Markstrom and maybe a current roster player like Jensen could be offered for one of those premium defencemen, especially a young one before they sign a long-term deal (eg. Hedman, Ekblad).

i tend to agree with you. I think in a couple years we are gonna have a log jam of centres of the same ilk. I also belive in hank and like you said it takes time to groom that stud 1d. id be fine with moving some of our prospects at centre left wing if the bounty would be someone like dumba or morrisey or pouliot. id do jenson+ for anyone of those 3, or maybe gaunce and jenson+ for hedman? The real wild card this year is edler, if he reverts back to stud status which i think is gonna happen. It buys us time to maybe draft one instead. realistically i see us with a pick around 15-18. with how deep this draft is that might be good enough to get that type of player. if not we could always move up a few spots since for once we have some good young guys or picks to dangle to a team picking a few spots ahead of us. Or who knows maybe hutton or corrado etc make huge leaps and become that guy for us. same with forsling kid has great offensive skills

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