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Shaman

Should Valtteri Filppula be traded?

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Should Flip be traded?  

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Huds has been perfectly capable of getting back on the play. It has been more than a few times where Hudler is one of the deepest Wings in the zone, and the other team starts a rush back and Hudler manages to be the first or second Wing back on the backcheck. I think his skating and defense "deficiencies" are overstated because he plays for a team that hunts for those things in centers regardless of line. A lot of teams out there would stick Hudler in the middle without a second thought.

A lot of those teams aren't the Detroit Redwings, and don't have Mike Babcock as coach. His system relies on the centre to do all the work, to do all the back-checking. When we are at our defensive best, it is because our centers are all over the opposition puck carrier through the neutral zone.

Don't get me wrong, I like Hudler, especially when he's got his scrappy, go-to-the-net head on. He reminds me of this guy

Scrappy.gif

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A lot of those teams aren't the Detroit Redwings, and don't have Mike Babcock as coach.

He actually agrees with you in that manner.

His main contention, at least for Hudler's case, seems to be against that very philosophy of defining a scoring line center's responsibilities as having at the bare minimum decent size, speed, never a question about their work ethic, overall hockey sense and above average defensive aptitude. Some teams don't require that much.

The real question is which of those teams are competing for the top of their division and or conference? (And how do we force Eva and his notorious purposelessness to those team's boards so we don't have to put up with his bulls***?) There doesn't seem to be many, if any at all. If you look at most of the teams who are in position for a playoff spot and if their 1st or 2nd line center doesn't have size, he can at least skate. And in today's game that's extremely important.

Hudler has ONE thing going for him that might be able to compete with the other 1st and 2nd line centers among playoff teams and that's hockey sense in the offensive zone. If hockey was only a turn-based game of power plays then I'm sure Eva could send out the pokeball containing Hudler and he could play center just fine. Unfortunately we also have to deal with something called reality every now and again so there goes that.

Here comes a list of names and statistics and a bunch more nonsense...

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