I never knew he was the NHLPA "right hand man" until a few days ago, and I didn't care either. He's a key part of one of the worst D in the NHL last year, and it shows, sorry if he's your man.
Actually all evidence points to:
1) The D was not bad when all 4 top 4 were in. In fact Jets were top 15 in possesion, dimininishing chances, shots against/min, etc.
2) All evidence is Hainsey is the 4th best D we got... 3rd till Bogo gets back.
3) AHL is diff than NHL... Postma and Redmond would crash and burn given the same job.
4) If you want to ignore injuries: all.our top3 D were positive when with Hainsey (well Enstrom was - by a tiny bit but was still out-chancing his opponents) but all 3 top3 were - with Stuart (who I like but was a negative when in top 4)
Start rant:
I think Hainsey is far from perfect and in fact I'm a huge supporter of upgrading Hainsey... But it is ****ing ridiculous how much and how often he gets bashed for things that are COMPLETELY UNTRUE.
Last season Hainsey was given tougher matchups than ALL of our D except Enstrom and he was burried in defensive zone by how Noel deployed him more than any of our D or any of our forwards not in GST... Yet he still came out with a positive +/- and was *barely* out-chanced by the opposition. This season he's been given the task of filling Bogo's shoes while having Stuart (a good 3rd pairing D, but still a 3rd pairing D; OT but I was impressed with Stu on the Wash game) as his partner.
You want to be pissed at our poor GA or you have a preference of tough players... Fine, go ahead... But don't go off pointing blame at Hainsey because it wasn't him. If anything it was a combination of poor PK, Pavelec, disgusting team D due to no forward depth, and injuries that put 3rd pairing D in our top4.