What made them fail is their powerplay, literally died. Add that to the fact that they only had a single line as a scoring threat- they became incredibly easy for other teams to match up.
What I don't understand about guys chucking around terms like top 6 forward, top 4 defenseman (especially when talking about trading guys like Hjalmarsson or Leddy for). . . what those guys are really talking about is one of the top 2 lw, rw, or c on a team -- and who is going to trade (in the case of Hjammer - and under-performing, overpaid defenseman for one of their top 2 forwards? (in effect there is no such thing as 'top 6 forward -as forward is based upon specific position to me. Same thing for defenseman -- top 4 defenseman = top 2 LD or RD ... ok, if one guy isn't functioning well enough on your team in that position - what team is going to trade what you need - in effect for the same position on the depth chart? How do you translate that into value in what amounts to a one for one deal? I don't think you can -- not at one for one at any rate.
Doan? Well... ok he has been consistent -- but you know, with all due respect - so had Brunette. I would not go more than 2 years for Doan - plus I think he is basically doing a Parise/Sutter with teams - using them to leverage his eventual salary (or term of salary)... the old "we're interested in moving our NHL franchise to Kansas City (small print unless someone can puhleeeese come up with a halfway decent deal to keep us from moving to Kansas City...)." stunt.
And the thing is -- it works.
I agree with this to some extent. But I think that top 6 forward is different than a bottom six forward. They're different types of players. The top 6 guys are supposed to be good offensively and are usually the guys that are fancier or whatever. That's why if you can have a big tough guy that can score in the top 6, you have a good advantage. The bottom 6, on the other hand, is more defensive minded and is usually out there against the top lines of the other team. They're usually grittier and bigger and when they can score, you have an advantage. I think there's a big difference there.
I agree with only giving Doan like 2-3 years because he's not exactly young, but I don't think a comparison to Brunette is really good. Doan has been better than Brunette his entire career. And to be honest, the Hawks should have looked at the stats of Brunette and realized that maybe he wasn't the guy he used to be. From 2009-2010 to 2010-2011, he dropped 15 points and 7 of those points were goals.
And honestly all free agents do that by trying to say that they're really looking to go somewhere. Parise and Suter played that game for three days. Doan is playing it now. We're just seeing a lot of it this summer because of the good free agents.
Looking at the players who will be UFAs next year, I think the Hawks are smart to not spend a lot on long term deals, but if they can get Doan for 2-3 year deal without too big of a cap hit, that's a huge win for the Hawks.
