Mailbag: Sam Gagner Isn't Good Enough (Choose Your Comparable)

Dear Mr. Zona,

Recently I was arguing upon a message board with fellow oilers fans a point I had come across and I am hoping that you could shed a little more light on it. I looked at every stanley cup winner over the past 30 years and noticed that 9 times out of 10 the stanley cup winner had two 60+ point producing centers.

My argument on the message board was that edmonton should deal for a proper point producing no.2 center and that would help them succeed faster. The counter argument was Sam Gagner is still developing and will indeed produce 60 points with better teammates in the near future.

I appreciate your time and I'm looking forward to your reply!

Below is a list of centers (some later switched to wing) who plied their trade in the NHL from 1955 onwards:

Aaron Broten, Adam Creighton, Alan Haworth, Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, Bernie Nicholls, Bob Pulford, Bobby Carpenter, Brian Bellows, Brian Bradley, Butch Goring, Dale Hunter, Dan Quinn, Darren Turcotte, Dave Andreychuk, Dave Christian, Dave Keon, David Legwand, Daymond Langkow, Derek Plante, Don Lever, Don McKenney, Doug Gilmour, Garry Unger, Greg Malone, Guy Chouinard, Ivan Boldirev, Jim Fox, Jimmy Carson, John Chabot, John Tucker, Jozef Stumpel, Marc Savard, Martin Straka, Mel Bridgman, Mike Ricci, Murray Oliver, Nelson Emerson, Patrick Marleau, Paul Gardner, Pelle Eklund, Peter McNab, Peter Zezel, Pit Martin, Ralph Backstrom, Ray Ferraro, Robert Reichel, Ron Duguay, Ron Flockhart, Russ Courtnall, Scott Gomez, Stephen Weiss, Steve Kasper, Thomas Steen, Tim Young, Vincent Damphousse

In the comments, choose your best three Gagner comparables from the list*. Feel free to argue your stance and give some reasoning behind your choices

*your answers may or may not (but let's not kid ourselves) be compiled and used in a future post.