2. Sidney Crosby may become a star someday, but I think he may be the most overrated NHL prospect in years. He's been described as the next Gretzky/Lemieux/etc., but his junior record doesn't give that indication at all.
3. Most of the players listed in this article are aging NHL stars who are long past their primes.
Let's look at what you've said:
Rules changes may help Lemieux more than anything else. Having said that, he'll probably play 60-65 games.
As for Sid, I think you're way off base. Overrated? Sounds like sour grapes to me. His junior stats look fine to me. What are you looking at?
"Most" are past their prime? Recchi can still play, LeClair, yeah, maybe, Odelein can still be effective, the rest of these guys are right around 30. Is that the cutoff age for "washed up" these days?
All in all, though, I agree that this talk of a Stanley Cup for Pittsburgh is, shall we say, premature. What Patrick wants to do is put a very competitive team team on the ice and wait for the many prospects in the system to come along in the next year or two (does the name"Malkin" mean anything to you?), and then we'll see.
As for the Flyers, I can think of no other team that may (may, mind you) be hurt by the new rules.
that Orton guy got killed in trafic too. BOB Clarke still has my respect 4 2cups. He still works his butt off. I'm concerned about rule changes too - Flyers went big, will speedier game negate size?time will tell. Phantoms promotions COULD really b a pleasant surprise. I'm looking forward to sumthin on tv!
What Patrick is trying to do is build the best team possible in the shortest time possible to win the cup. The Penguins future in Pittsburgh is contingent on a new arena. A new Stanley Cup banner to hang in the rafters would do well to bring some new interest and dollars into the team and for a new arena.
And at 5-11 and 193 pounds, I'd hardly expect him to be a dominating physical presence on the ice (though the rule changes should help players like him).
My prediction is that Crosby is going to develop into a player along the lines of Philadelphia's Simon Gagne. A highly-skilled player with good offensive numbers (25-35 goals, with perhaps 100 points in a good year), but not quite a franchise player.
As for the Flyers, I can think of no other team that may (may, mind you) be hurt by the new rules.
I agree with you. I said this to myself as soon as I saw some of their off-season moves. They're building a team that might have been a Stanley Cup contender in 2002, but not anymore.
My pick for the Stanley Cup this year is New Jersey (again). They've been rather quiet in the off-season and have lost two of the best defensemen in the NHL in the last few decades (Scott Niedermayer and Scott Stevens), but they have several key points in their favor that will help them surprise a lot of people.
For one thing, Lou Lamoriello basically wrote the league's salary cap rules himself in the league's collective bargaining process, so he knows exactly how it works and probably began putting his 2005-06 roster together 18 months ago. Another advantage for that team is that the new rules will likely favor the kinds of players Lamoriello has always coveted over the years even when they're overlooked by other NHL teams -- small, quick forwards (mostly NCAA products) like Mark Johnson, Brendan Morrison, Petr Sykora, John Madden, Scott Gomez, Sergei Brylin, Brian Gionta, etc.