This is a stupid statement, there are literally DOZENS of defenseman that can make as much of a contribution as these 2 kids right now... All over Russia and Europe their are guys that are easily available who could contribute better. The best possible decision that can be made for the future of the club is to actually rotate through some of these guys and see if anyone takes advantage of the opportunity.The upside to them playing here and now is that it allows us to ice the best team possible. That is a statement to what is waiting in the wings down on the farm - a sad one at that.
Don't believe me? Look up some of these names, and realize that most of these guys are either freely available or would be extremely easy to obtain the rights to:
Janne Niskala - a good two way defenseman just entering his prime that plays for the finish national team. Property of Nashville, would be very easy to swing a trade for this guy.
Andreas Holmqvist - Property of Tampa Bay, would again be just as good as either of the kids and would be easy to get.
Kimmo Lotvonen - a good solid veteran D man that would be better then our #5 or #6 guy this year at least.
These are just a few of the euros who never get noticed for the kind of game that would fit nicely over here. If the canucks had the kind of global scouting coverage like Detroit, and New Jersey we would know about some of these guys. Hell if we had the kind of scouting that Manchester United has we would probably have 20 Edlers - not that I don't realize that's impossible but saying that these two will any any significant way make the team better is just simply stupid. Edler might have a shot at making the team slightly better, as hes only played one game its kind of hard to judge that but he hasn't exactly been tearing up the AHL so I have a tendency to think he just played a very good game. But Bordoun? who are we kidding, this kids not ready for the bigs by a long shot quite frankly by probably 2 years. Next year Koltsov will be back and in all probability our best defenseman, hes certainly the most skilled guy in the organization at this point so why rush all these guys? People didn't want to rush kids in 3 years ago when we actually had a legitimate shot at a cup when they clearly deserved to be here but now that they don't and we have no shot everyone wants to bring them up? This is the kind of ass backwards thinking that the best teams in the league avoid.
The most painful thing in all of this is how much worse the drafting of Bordoun looks when you consider how much of our current crop of prospects is heavily wieghed towards the defence as it is.
Consider this: In 5 years we will have Koltsov, Edler, Bordoun, Bieksa, and Krajicek will all just be entering their prime. That's if we don't find ourselves without another quality defenseman between now and then (a near impossibility). How much better would it have looked to draft Kopitar now?