garret9
AKA#VitoCorrelationi
I guess I will disagree with a majority but then again I am used to minority dissent.
I find it unusual so much offence comes from our defence. It drives me crazy that somehow Byfuglien's offensive game is more important than that of our 3-4 liners. I prefer stay at home defencemen that punish forwards for playing a finesse game. We don't have those players on this club other than maybe Bogo. I also believe it's the same problem the Oilers have faced over the last 2-3 years.
Based on my VERY AMATEUR experiences as a 3-4th line player, I always found it straining to back check. It took away from my physical play and the forecheck. I couldn't hit as often or nearly as hard to punish defencemen. It's for this reason I worry. I think it will be tough for our forwards to keep that intensity for an entire game if they are always worried about their defensive responsibilities. I don't feel it's their primary job. We need scoring and consistency. I prefer to let defencemen concentrate on defence.
I simply don't believe this is a good way to construct a hockey team (especially as we are rebuilding).
Most of us don't think you're wrong in essence. Many of us say our D-corpse is missing a quality defensive defenseman (see list I made above).
The problem of your comments are the punishing bit matters a lot less than are they effective and some of your assumptions of some of our D are wrong (also commented in one paragraph which ones those are).
Trouba IMO is 3-4 years away from top 4 and he's probably the only D prospect who has a solid chance of being that guy. So, many of us are hoping for a 2013 UFA signing to replace Hainsey when he's off the books. To me being physical is nice and a plus, but what's far more important is actually working. There are physical guys who will never be effective, physical guys who are effective, and non-physical guys who are effective, which sometimes is missed. Then for 2013-14 we can have:
Enstrom-Byfuglien
XX-Bogosian
Stuart-Postma
Redmond
The two first pairings can take all the tough matchups so Stuart can kick the **** out of 3rd and 4th liners and no-longer-rookie-Postma's offensive skills become more effective while his defensive liabilities become severly minimized. This core could actually win a cup and would be very solid.