very unlike or the coyotes to spend "all in" money, but certainly needed if they ever want to compete.

Arizona would be so incredibly foolish to make that deal for Duchene in the first place. He is not and will probably never be a 1st line center. Furthermore, until Arizona restructures its hockey operations department, gets themselves a competent GM and a legitimate starting goalie, there is no way they will attract any big name free agents and I doubt OEL will resign. I also don't see them making the playoffs for at least another 3 years.

I think they have a very good GM in John Chayka and Raanta has good numbers as their goalie. You may be right about attracting Neal, but if they traded for Duchene first I think Neal would at least consider it if they were also paying him 500k more than market value.

Arizona's GM may be a very nice personable young man, but that doesn't do anything when it comes to his track record, as far as his time serving as the team's GM. There may not be a better option at the moment, considering the tough time Carolina is having finding a new GM, but he's not the guy that will take Arizona to the playoffs. Based on your moves and what the team had previously, it seems they have a lot of good to decent second line centers, but until they get a number of elite pieces, I just don't see it happening. That said, if Chayka made a super bold deal and somehow got Carey Price, then I will certainly revisit my position.

Duchene is closer to a 1st line C than what they have, but the reality is they need more scoring and adding another "#2 C" would also be beneficial. They are 29th in scoring and 20th in goals against. How is Price going to be any better than Raanta has been this season? The guy is 3rd in GAA with 2.24 and 2nd in Save % at .930, Carey Price only has 1 season in his career as equal or better than that which was in 2014-2015. I don't think Price would turn the team around, they just need a quality backup to add to Raanta imo.

Duchene barely has a higher pts/game rate than Stepan. Duchene has a 0.73 ppg rate and Stepan has a rate of 0.69. Those rates are mainly what 2nd line centers have. And Duchene has had a horrible year overall playing 1C. So in this case, Stepan should be 1C and Duchene at 2C.

I think Duchene is more talented and more offensive and Stepan is better defensively. That's why I picked Stepan to play on the 2nd line to match up against the other teams top line. A lot of teams decide not to go 1st line vs 1st line, so that was my reasoning. Duchene also did fine as the #1 C during his tenure with Colorado so that tells me more about his capabilities then just simply looking at this season alone and how he may have fared as the #1 C for Ottawa.

Ok I get where you are coming from