Dominic Moore, a lifelong journeyman, was traded for the sixth time yesterday. |
For you that know hockey through and through, you know who Dom Moore is. You know that he's a 3rd/4th line center who shoots left handed, does well for himself in the dot and quietly has a pair of hands. But he's also a guy whose literally been bounced from team to team since the day he stepped on NHL ice in 2005. Most of the NHL fan population probably knows more because he once, for even only 18 games, played for their team. The question remains, how does a journeyman work? How does a guy play for so many teams and still stay focused? How do deal with be an automatic trade deadline player?
Dom Moore is a player that everyone wants at the deadline. He adds depth at the center position and his face-off numbers are top-tier. His consistency has been often overhyped, but also often overlooked. Every deadline he makes headlines as a "solid pickup" and every deadline he is sent off as deadweight. Yet, every time Moore seemingly settles into a club, they immediately want to ship him. For all the motivation for organizations to bring him aboard, there have been just as much desire to send him on his merry way. He's played for 9 teams, been traded six times and waived twice. Going through the gauntlet is Moore's specialty. Once Moore was traded to two teams in two separate transactions in the same day. At the deadline in 2007(the year the double trade went down) he was again traded from Pittsburgh to Minnesota.
Moore has known nothing but movement in his career. There is no consistency in where he plays, no long-term contracts, absolutely no settling down. He is, in the most basic form, an NHL player. He's not a superstar, not a star, not a playmaker, not a leader, and certainly not a mainstay. I'm not even sure he has any friends, or maybe he has too many. Everyone and their mother has called Dominic Moore their teammate and it's not clear if that's a good thing or not. Moore has never been sent down to the AHL since his true NHL career started in 2005, and for a journeyman that is absolutely amazing. I guess "solid enough" is his memo. But still, why can't a guy who has been given so many opportunities to succeed, find consistency on one team?
I don't understand why Dominic Moore can't fit a system. I don't see how he can underperform because he's never performed at a high enough level to be considered an underachiever. He's a fourth, maybe third line center. If he can win you a bunch of face-offs, skate hard and score a goal every once(that's exactly what he does) then I'm not sure why you keep dishing him to different teams. He's never made more than 1.1 million in a single year so his contract should never be an issue. There is no reason, at least to the naked eye, why Dom Moore should ever be traded.
Guess that's just the life of a journeyman, a guy everyone respects, but no one wants(or at least wants to keep). He looks like a quality player from afar, but I guess he's far from it. We'll never know what goes on the life of Dominic Moore or several other journeymen that fill the ranks of many NHL teams' fourth lines.
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