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You Decide
by Paul on 06/15/09 at 07:10 AM ET
Comments (6)
from Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press,
I want you to choose between two players.
Player 1 will turn 31 this summer. He has played 98 playoff games.
Player 2 will turn 31 next winter. He has also played 98 playoff games, and let me take a moment to thank him for that, because it makes this comparison almost perfect.
Player 1’s career postseason numbers: 22 goals, 41 assists, plus-19.
Player 2’s career postseason numbers: 31 goals, 45 assists, plus-4.
Which player would you rather have?
Player 1 is Pavel Datsyuk.
Player 2 is Hossa.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Detroit Red Wings | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
If it wasn’t for the salary cap, I’d say keep both. Problem is if they can possibly afford him. Otherwise the decision would be relatively easy.
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 06/15/09 at 08:20 AM ET
I’d take Datsyuk a hundred times. Dangle does a whole lot more on the ice than just score goals.
Posted by Alan from Atlanta on 06/15/09 at 08:32 AM ET
Stupid article. Another Detroit writer that only pays attention to hockey in the spring months pretending he’s qualified to write about it.
Hossa was better than he appeared on the stat sheet—I will agree with that. But you cannot deny that, especially with Datsyuk’s multiple injuries, Hossa was the guy that had to put up a few points—a single goal from him could’ve been the difference in the result of the series.
He’s got the talent, he’s clearly got the desire to win. Perhaps he wanted it too bad and forgot to just play hockey. Either way, while he was GOOD, he wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH.
Posted by Nathan from the scoresheet! on 06/15/09 at 08:35 AM ET
Hossa, ever? Right.
The problem with this is the problem with everyone saying that Datsyuk underperformed this year (before his injury). Datsyuk (And Zetterberg, too) goes well beyond the numbers.
I like Hossa, but you can’t even compare them. He’s a power forward, a sniper. Datsyuk is a playmaker, he works harder for every point that he gets and he creates goals out of thin air. And you can’t discount his defensive abilites, too.
The other problem with this idiot is that, if it ONLY cost us Hudler and Samuelson, then of course you would want to keep Hossa. Problem is that if you crunch the numbers, it doesn’t JUST cost us Hudler and Sammy. If the cap stays exactly the same this year, it STILL costs us more than Hudler and Sammy, it also costs us either Cleary or Flip or Kornwall or Stuart or MORE… It costs us at LEAST a $3M player on top of Sammy and Hudler, plus MORE because we’d need to fill out the rest of our roster, too.
Posted by Garth on 06/15/09 at 10:58 AM ET
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I’d take Datsyuk any day. He’s a much better all-around player who plays both ends of the rink. And because he’s played his entire NHL career with the Red Wings, he knows how to win.
Posted by AllanM88 from Toronto on 06/15/09 at 08:01 AM ET