Quoting: gretzkyghosts
I like your posts and how you are willing to listen to other comments.
I do not say that so you will accept my input only that you are very reasonable.
Here's the deal, both Little and Shibball hated Botterill so any player he picked up is worthless than a bucket of spit.
In fact Montour has and is playing well.
Two years age after being traded to Buffalo he was the Sabres best defenseman for the final 20 games of the season.
Last year only Ristolainen played more minutes per game than he and this year only Dahlin and Ristolainen play more than he. Plus he had the best +/- of all skaters last season.
This year of all defensemen he has the highest 5 on 5 SV%
While Staal for Compher may be a close deal (what is up with J.T. this year) Montour for Graves is not even close.
Thanks, it's nice to hear some positive feedback. Much appreciated!
I was actually just looking closer at Montour's advanced stats to try to get a better picture. Here's a post I made on the Hfboards Avs trade thread about him if you're interested: https://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/176115712/
I agree with what you're saying about Montour. It seems to me that he's been a bit of a victim of circumstance, having to always play LD or with crap D partners (eg. Irwin). When he's been paired with McCabe or Dahlin he's done pretty well statistically. But then again that would be expected as Dahlin and McCabe are far more solid than other guys on that team, though his pairing with Dahlin and McCabe has outperformed most other pairings, like Dahlin-Miller for example.
Montour is the sort of Dman that needs to have a good coach to succeed; a coach who can identify his strengths and play to them. He's not an offensive Dman or PPQB, but what he is elite at is getting the puck from the DZ to the OZ. He also needs to have permission to rush the puck, which is somethng not all coaches like. Barrie for example went from a 60 point Dman in Colorado to a disaster in Babcock's team because Babcock didn't want any puckrushing.
If the team that acquires him knows what they're doing it could end up being a really nice cheap deal for them. 40 point puck-rushing Dmen don't grow on trees after all.
That said, to be balanced I think it's fair to say that Montour's defensive zone play is pretty bad. The Avs D system is also built around stopping zone entries with Dmen who step up at the line and forwards that backcheck hard, and that isn't exactly Montour's strong suit, so I could see some trepidation in acquiring him, at least from the Avs perspective. We've also got 4 puckmoving Dmen who aren't the biggest guys, so I think Sakic would be more likely to try to acquire more of a shutdown type to bolster our 3rd pairing rather than a puckrushing Dman. Would be pretty fun if we did add Montour though, and would allow us to explore options to trade Timmins for a good middle 6 C in a separate trade.
Regarding Compher, the way he's playing is really weird. I mean there's just very little engagement, just a guy doing a whole lot of nothing. It's weird to see, because we all know how he can play. Before he signed that contract he was a tenacious puck hound playing full of energy and getting to dirty areas and scoring some nice goals around the net; but that's all gone this year. Judging by TOI last game (he played 5:50 in the first 2 periods, and then got 5 minutes in the 3rd when the game was basically over already) he seems to be on a short leash. O'Connor has come in and played really well, so if he doesn't up his game he could be on his way out of the lineup pretty soon.