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Khan(!): Uncle Mike Views Sopel As Top 4 Guy

by IwoCPO on 09/12/07 at 03:12 PM ET
Comments (7)

Ansar Khan(!) was handing out balloons as the Wings boarded busses for the trip to TC today.  He found a few minutes to throw a few questions at his primary antagonist, Mike Babcock.  One subject was potential diamond in the rough Brent Sopel.

On veteran defenseman Brent Sopel, in camp on a tryout: “I think he has a chance to be a real good fit for us. He can shoot the puck, he can skate with the puck. He’s got to take (away) some of the erratic play he’s had. (Wings assistant coach) Todd McClellan coached him juniors, I’ve known him since he was a kid, we have a real good feel for him and think he’s a top-four NHL defenseman. Now, just because we think it doesn’t mean anything, he’s got to relax and let his skill come to the forefront and show us what he brings (though the preseason).’’

Here’s what the Empire’s resident Canuck expert (alanaH) had to say when I asked her about Sopel earlier this week:

Canucks let him go because the year his contract came up for negotiation (2 years ago? i think) he had grossly increased his value - about double of what it was. So LA gave him the big contract.  But then LA sucked ass, so they gave him up at the trade deadline and Vancouver thought they could use him going into the playoffs, since skaters were going down like flies, and D was a concern.

However, Sopel’s contract was almost never a serious consideration to get picked up beyond this past season.  He didn’t have a good playoffs, but he’s worth too much and Vancouver has plenty of D.

My opinion: I like him a ton, but lots of Canucks fans would argue with me about him. He’s fairly offensive in style, so he would occasionally give up some dumbass plays. But I like players that take chances, so it never bothered me really.

I’m not sure she was sober when she replied. I’ll ask again in a few days.

Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
 Tags: Babcock, Deep+Diggers, Fellow+Bloggers, Sopel,

Comments

He actually got traded to the Islanders and then got traded at the deadline to LA with Parrish in 2006.  And then last deadline (07) he got traded to Van.

Posted by DetCapC19 from Vancouver, BC on 09/12/07 at 02:32 PM ET

Oops. So I wasn’t sober then.
Oh well. I was in a HURRY when you asked me that question, Sailor Boy!

Posted by Alanah McGinley from British Columbia on 09/12/07 at 02:38 PM ET

Nice job AlanaH.  I can’t even count on you to get Canuck stuff right.  Who let you in the Empire?

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 09/12/07 at 06:40 PM ET

Sopel sounds like the Bizzaro-Markov.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 09/12/07 at 07:18 PM ET

Sober or not and the missed stop at NYI notwithstanding, the rest seems to be a pretty accurate description of Sopel from what I’ve read… most of which came from a search of KK for “Brent Sopel” that I made a few days ago.

Unfortunately, I just tried the search again and it isn’t working.  The search results page comes up ok, but following links to old C and B posts all end up at the C and B home instead.  (Search page links go to canucksandbeyond.com… workaround by substituting kuklaskorner.com in the URL.  Still a changeover problem there.  More work for the techies.)

Posted by BobTheZee on 09/12/07 at 07:48 PM ET

Bob - sorry your search of the old Canucks and Beyond posts was muddled up.  I’m having some domain redirect issues that I hope to have resolved in a day or so.

Posted by Alanah McGinley from British Columbia on 09/12/07 at 08:05 PM ET

No problem, Alanah.  A big change like this hardly ever goes perfectly — I guess you were just fortunate enough to get stuck with one of the problems.  Computers are great time-savers, eh?

Posted by BobTheZee on 09/12/07 at 10:37 PM ET

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