NHL NEWS: The Canucks and Eric Gudbranson. Doing the obvious! and a look back at the "mean" and "assassin" style Defenseman,

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Eric Gudbranson, is about to be traded....or is he?....apparently Jim Benning isn't being offered much more than a 4th round pick for the big guy....sounds about right.


So, now "Trader Jim" is playing things "real smart like" and acting as if he really would prefer to SIGN Gudbranson to a long-term deal.......

...He WHAT!?!....Surely not as a hockey player? Not......not...TO PLAY DEFENSE!

Eric Gudbranson has proven to be an AHL level player during his stint in Vancouver, BUT! Now there's a hitch...


.....with Dorsette retired, who's going to stop Avalanche players from cross-checking Brock Boesser face first into the boards?

Eric Gudbranson THAT'S WHO!

Ok...but what is he goign to do for the rest of his time? He can't really PLAY HOCKEY.

Well, there is one thing you could do with him....

MOVE HIM TO LEFT WING!!! OBVIOUSLY! This is the LEAST demanding position in all of hockey!


I still have NO IDEA why the obvious has yet to be tried...

It's hard to play Defense, you have to think A LOT nowadays.

Defense used to be where you put your big tough, scary guys, who weren't totally useless, Your top guy was a skill player, but below that, the idea was to have a bunch of club-wielding Neanderthals, who would actually scare opposing forwards to the point that they didn't feel safe behind your blueline. But the key was NOT TOTALLY USELESS, 


They usually weren't fast, but they understood what they were seeing and got themselves into position, they also knew a myriad of ways to get the puck out of the zone and into the hands of a winger

There was also the "Assasin" Defenseman, Konstantinov, Pilon, Samuellson (Ulf. Kjell was of the former type) Marchment, Kasparitis, Vishnevski, Stevens these were guys with above average hockey I.Q who could watch a play develop and know exactly where guys were going to be in 3 or 4 seconds (an eternity in hockey) their specialty was making sure there was a nasty surprise waiting for you when you got there, 


As much as this group is hated, what they did took a lot of skill, big dumb goons were never able to fill this role because they didn't have the smarts. Kronwall is a more modern example of this type of player, but it somehow seems insulting that bunch of cold-blooded sociopaths to let Kronwall be mentioned as one of them. 

These guys weren't necessarily big, the key ingredients as were to a higher degree of skill than those possed by Type A and complete and utter lack of conscience, they hurt people for a living....it's probably hard for younger fans to even believe this type of player existed, but they really did.....


To give you an example of how hated this type of defenseman was, the Pitsburg Penguins had to hire special round the clock security for Ulf Samuelsson during the playoffs one year.

He was receiving death threats in Boston after taking out the knee of Bruins superstar Cam Neely, in a calculated, premeditated and very successful attempt to take the Bruins top scorer OUT of the series.

Pittsburg won the cup.

Cam Neely was forced into early retirement due to the damage was done to his knee.

Then there was Dale Hawerchuck, a scorer so talented he deserves to be remembered in a class with Steve Yzerman, right below Gretzky and Lemeuix, getting towards his later years Dale had racked up 100pt season after 100pt season but had no cup to show for it.


Acquired by the Philidelphia Flyers, he found himself in the Stanley Cup final for the first time in the late 90's, it was his dream come true and the last piece of his legacy only inches from his grasp...

...aaaaand then Vlad "The Impaler" Konstantinov decided, Dale had played enough hockey for one lifetime.


Konstantinov demolished Hawerchuck with a hit so devastating, Dale was taken from the ice unconscious and never played in the NHL again. While most of the credit for ending Eric Lindros's career obviously goes to Scott Stevens, you have to give Konstantinov a little credit too as he and Lindros traded concussions on more than one occasion,


In one of the more viscerally upsetting "hits" by this type of D-man, The Islanders Rich Pilon actually caved in the side of Penguins power forward Kevin Stevens during a high-speed collision, that would signal the end of Pittsburg's 2-year mini-Cup dynasty. Obviously, I like my hockey violence, but this one was too much for me. Pilon was a nasty...nasty player, he was less skilled than the others mentioned and therefore had a harder time reading the play, which lead to fewer opportunities to show his NHL worth, so when they came....he made sure they counted.


In the modern NHL the defenseman is essentially a center iceman who doesn't take faceoffs, it's like there's a Center Forward and a Center back. They have the same job, guard their own slot and make plays in the oppositions. Either moving the puck up ice or being the "Middleman" between the puck carrier and the shooter.

So which of these categories or new and old Defensemen does Gudbransson fit into?


None,


What teams used to do with players like Gudbransson was move them to the left wing, where they would reserve a spot on the 3rd and 4th lines for the designated fighters.


Why a player with no real skill has been allowed to occupy a position that demands it is beyond me.

For a simple man, a simple game and there is no position easier to grasp that left-wing checker.

Of course, back in the day, those guys didn't demand 5 million per contracts either.

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