Why don't you just accept that people have favorites and goats. It is part of all sports. If you think that dragging out stats is just going to change people's minds it isn't. People love Rinne. They will give him more leeway because of that. Hutton is a stranger. Hendricks is a stranger. You are going to be more skeptical of them because you don't know them. If Hutton plays lights out in the next few weeks people will change their minds.
I'm not a fan of accepting hypocrisy. If a player, no matter how loved, lays an egg they laid an egg and need to be called on it. If a player does well, again no matter how much he is loved or hated, he did well and deserve recognition for it. Fairness in reward and punishment.
Right now the
PREDS have inconsistent goaltending and defense. Both Hutton and Rinne have been Jekyll and Hyde this season. A couple good games each accompanied by misplayed pucks and stretches where it looks like they couldn't stop anything. The defense has a shift every now and then where they just leave somebody wide open to pick where they want to shoot the puck ... almost playing the equivalent of 5 year old kids "herd ball" soccer. Line changes are adventures and for some reason the puck gets turned over right in the middle of a change leading to a scrambling effort in our defensive end. Offensively, the rush is ineffective , the PP is struggling with only five goals 5on4, our expected scorers are absent at even strength, and too rarely are we getting players in position for the ugly goals that too often are the only ones we manage to get at ES.
Players we expected to perform haven't yet (Wilson, Bourque, Forsberg, Stalberg). Players we thought would have secondary roles are having to pick up the slack or are thrust into roles we hoped they wouldn't fill for a prolonged time (Nystrom, Hutton/Hellberg).
