Richard Cloutier: Terrible Lie: The Sam Gagner Story

Another blog? God love you, you magnificent bastard!

Good blog. Ive long maintained Staal is overhyped and overrated.

gagner and magnus is not worth staal at the moment, but your theory of playing gagner with the likes of taylor hall or yako improving his points to like a 60-70 pt guy the following season will increase his value and be better than staals.

In my opinion you guys dont need to trade anyone. You keep that 1st draft pick and you keep gagner. The only guys you should be trading is prob magnus for another decent defender and if you guys sign schultz, which you guys will, your teams gunna kick ass this season. Even if you guys get a better goaltender, that would be good as well.

Cloutier more like Clowntier.

Cloutier more like Clowntier.
- Charlie M.

good one...... NOT

gagner and magnus is not worth staal at the moment, but your theory of playing gagner with the likes of taylor hall or yako improving his points to like a 60-70 pt guy the following season will increase his value and be better than staals.

In my opinion you guys dont need to trade anyone. You keep that 1st draft pick and you keep gagner. The only guys you should be trading is prob magnus for another decent defender and if you guys sign schultz, which you guys will, your teams gunna kick ass this season. Even if you guys get a better goaltender, that would be good as well.
- Mapleleafs_91

The only question will be when they finally make the playoffs when ever that may be, will they be physical enough in the top 9? Teams that have succes seem to be physical, although the nucks did make it to the cup final game 7 last season.

Cloutier more like Clowntier.
- Charlie M.

I would prefer if you called me Cirque du Cloutier.

Good blog. Ive long maintained Staal is overhyped and overrated.
- TheTaoOfSemenko

Crosby and Malkin also play against the tougher opponents... Staal gets the left overs

Sorry, Gagner and an asset for Staal is a rip off for the Pens. Regardless of the scoring, Staal is LIGHT YEARS ahead of Gagner atm and I personally think Gagner is a third line center at best (on a mediocre team). I've seen him play many times, and he's really not that impressive. Jordan Staal, on the other hand, I ALWAYS notice and he's making plays on both ends. Staal is a far better hockey player.

edit: Totally disagree on the notion that Staal is "good" because he plays against the opponent's weak line(s). There haven't been many times where both Malkin and Sid have been healthy and playing at their best. Staal picked up the work load and thrived.

gagner would kick the poop out a staal.... he's a puss

gagner and magnus is not worth staal at the moment, but your theory of playing gagner with the likes of taylor hall or yako improving his points to like a 60-70 pt guy the following season will increase his value and be better than staals.

In my opinion you guys dont need to trade anyone. You keep that 1st draft pick and you keep gagner. The only guys you should be trading is prob magnus for another decent defender and if you guys sign schultz, which you guys will, your teams gunna kick ass this season. Even if you guys get a better goaltender, that would be good as well.
- Mapleleafs_91

The key to improving our team is limiting the amount of games Khabibulin plays. I mentioned in another thread that over the last 2 seasons, Dubnyk has a record of 32 wins and 33 losses while Khabibulin has a record of 22 wins, and 52 losses... He's absolute garbage. If we re-sign Khabibulin, I'm going to flip my sh1t.

Cloutier more like Clowntier.
- Charlie M.

Wtf is this?

Your line up could very much look like this:

Eberle Nuge Hall

Yako Gagner Hemsky

Jones Horcoff Smyth

Eager Belanger ______

*this is with you guys resigning smyth to a cheap contract*

Nick Schultz Justin Schultz

Whitney Smid

Petry ______

Extra: peckham, potter, sutton, barker, and plante, klefbom, marincin to fill in one of those spots.

Knabs
Dub

You guys have one hell of a team only thing you guys gotta do is draft yako, resign smyth to a CHEAP contract, resign gagner 3-3.5. Resign petry and dub. Sign Justin Schultz. Possibly try to upgrade your goaltending still and your good to go.

Did you really want to bring the poop show here? i just finished skimming ek's thread and it is full of hate and humor, and some poor Hab fan who just parrots whatever seems to be the consensus.

Your line up could very much look like this:

Eberle Nuge Hall

Yako Gagner Hemsky

Jones Horcoff Smyth

Eager Belanger ______

*this is with you guys resigning smyth to a cheap contract*

Nick Schultz Justin Schultz

Whitney Smid

Petry ______

Extra: peckham, potter, sutton, barker, and plante, klefbom, marincin to fill in one of those spots.

Knabs
Dub

You guys have one hell of a team only thing you guys gotta do is draft yako, resign smyth to a CHEAP contract, resign gagner 3-3.5. Resign petry and dub. Sign Justin Schultz. Possibly try to upgrade your goaltending still and your good to go.


- Mapleleafs_91

smyth should gtfo.... I'd rather make room for a moen or prust

smyth should gtfo.... I'd rather make room for a moen or prust
- Killbot460

you need those veterans though.... remember those are the guys that brought you to the finals that year

you need those veterans though.... remember those are the guys that brought you to the finals that year
- Mapleleafs_91

I agree, but I'm not sure $myth is the answer. He's ridiculously slow, and he's after a big payday apparently. I've grown to strongly dislike $myth...

MaxBone:

IMO your overall hockey sense and ideas on trades are generally totally way off base.... however you made a good arguement... except... Staal's true Value does not lie in his offensive totals (as we are seeing with the GR8) if you were able to combine quantify kind of like a On base % in baseball and then given a difficulty rating (as he plays the tough Mins against other top talent that Gags does not)Staal's points with his abillity to prevent the other "superstars" from scoring I think you would have a real lanslide in overall tallent comparing Staal with Gags not just +/- but prevention of real scoring chances.

Think of it kinda like Hockeys version of Money ball....

I agree, but I'm not sure $myth is the answer. He's ridiculously slow, and he's after a big payday apparently. I've grown to strongly dislike $myth...
- laughs2907

honestly id prefer him over horcoff but you guys are stuck with horcoff, if he takes a cheap cut, sign him, if he wants a raise, you say to him theres the door OUT!

The thing is that there are plenty of players out there like gags and not as many like staal. Staal is still the more valuable player by a mile. Gags is also small, which is a bigger deal than people give it credit for

Gagner hasn't quite lived up to expectations, but he's still a 22 year old kid with some serious skill and potential. Just goes to show that some of the fans of eastern teams don't really have much of a clue about the western conference.

Gagner hasn't quite lived up to expectations, but he's still a 22 year old kid with some serious skill and potential. Just goes to show that some of the fans of eastern teams don't really have much of a clue about the western conference.
- Fosco

This.
He has played his 5 years on a team that has struggled to score and has been downright poopty and put up decent numbers. With some talent coming up I'm pretty sure Gagners numbers also go up.

This.
He has played his 5 years on a team that has struggled to score and has been downright poopty and put up decent numbers. With some talent coming up I'm pretty sure Gagners numbers also go up.
- abware

Yeah he's a noticeably different player when he plays with talent. When he was on our top line this year, he was a maniac. If we spread the wealth this year and stick him on a line with two of (Yakupov, Hall, Eberle, RNH) he'll have a break out season.

This is a pretty funny blog. To compare Gagner to Staal is like comparing a skateboard (Gagner) to my Mustang (Staal). I like Gagner, but it seems to me that he was drafted far to early in that draft. He benefited far too much from Patrick Kane and is really more second round draft talent. (mind you it was a terrible draft). I can see Pittsburgh doing a trade that involved Gagner but your second round pick this year and Paajarvi would be going to them as well...maybe even Omark or Pitlick too. Staal's not coming to any team cheap. Whoever gets him, is going to overpay.