It's weird how people say size and toughness matter on defense, but completely ignore the fact that we lost our biggest (Carlo) and toughest (Miller) defenders in the Islanders series. If size and toughness are important (and I agree that they are) then shouldn't losing those two be the biggest reason we lost?
Also weird how people talk about how our D was exposed for being too small the last two years, but conveniently leave out 3 years ago when we made it to the Stanley Cup Finals with three guys under 5'11.
Weird.
It has a to do with a combination of skillset and size. Is size and toughness important? Yes, but that Stanley Cup team had Krug who was a total gamer and Clifton isn't shy to get physical. The common theme from both series was that the Blues and Islanders brought a physical game and were able to get in deep against the Bruins. That was with Chara, McAvoy, and Carlo on the team.
In my opinion, a player on this board that gets unnecessary hate due to his size is Grzelcyk. He is a top 4 defenseman who understands that his size isn't something he can rely on so he has made up for it in other areas. He is also one half of one of the best defensive pairing in the league. With that said, Grzelcyk was also someone that struggled at times in those series. If one of your best defensemen has struggled with physical teams that like to play down low, I don't think Forbort and Reilly help in that area at all. Although both bring certain skillsets to the defense, I don't think they bring the right skillsets for this team.
Reilly is great at transitioning the puck and has a good eye for seams that open up on offense. Apart from that, he is very weak defensively. Forbort is great at penalty killing and average defensively, but he isn't the fastest defenseman on the team and doesn't seem to be as physical as we thought he would be. If I had to make the decision to play either Reilly or Forbort, I would pick Forbort.
With that said, I do think the Bruins need to add some physicality and an all-around defensemen on defense. What stinks is that Forbort + a bottom-pairing RHD that brings some physicality may not be as great as a pairing. A name thrown around here as an example is Gudbranson. A player with that skillset added to the Bruins is something they could use, but a Forbort - Gudbranson pairing would not be very good at transitioning the puck. It sucks that Zboril got injured because I think a Forbort - Zboril pairing would have worked great and would check off a lot boxes.
