To come back to Toivonen, same as with Jurcina. When he was with the Bruins he was being flamed endlessly, he's hardly gone and all of a sudden everyone is moaning because Chia traded away a potential #2 Dman. Lets face it, Jurcina sucked and getting rid of him and his salary was a good move.
Toivonen showed promise. Many prospects show promise. He wasn't exactly outstanding. You can't just look at 30% of his games where he was doing alright and ignore the rest. naff D might be an excuse for a poor GAA, not for all the soft goals. I'm not saying he's rubbish and will never even be a backup, but a lot of the people on the Bs boards are acting as if we traded the legitimate Brodeur-successor. Of course, again, he was being completely bashed before the trade.
Overall, I think we have improved, that's the good thing. The bad thing is, the expense is too high in relation to the improvement. Manny is better than Timmy, he's no 4m goalie though, never was, never will be. The loss of a top 3 prospect for an overpaid, overhyped goalie hurts. So does giving up a player with the upside of Boyes for...Wideman. But, as mentioned above, all in all I think we are a more complete team now than last season.
As for the Hannan/Vaananen point. I rate Vaananen but he's no #2 to me, and that's what we're lacking, not depth on defence, but a solid reliable #2. I'd have loved Hannan in Boston though.
I just hope Chia doesn't trade Muzz just for the sake of doing something. Many people don't realize he's one of the faces of the franchise and being an injury prone one trick pony still a 30-40g scorer. The East seems to have 3-4 top teams and a well balanced midfield, we could end up 6th, or 12th, nothing would really surprise me. Looking forward anyway. And we got Thornton to toss Tucker around
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](./images/smilies/wallbash.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
You know, Yashin, DiPietro, all that stuff... 