Remember PLD got injured at the end of last year and missed their final 6 games. He had 7 points in 9 games leading up to injury. He also had 23 in his last 35, despite dealing with a back injury and missing some time in March.
Not going to argue the merits of the trade, but current linemates are certainly a huge consideration.
That could certainly be the case, but he gets points in 83% of the 5v5 goals that happen when he's on the ice. That tells me that if he's not the one involved, it usually doesn't end up in the back of the net. You really can't get much higher than that, he's the only one ahead of Byfield.
It also screams to me that if he would bust his ass out there, we probably wouldn't be discussing his terrible play.
And I'm big on the advanced stats, and a lot of the things I said about Byfield we can say about PLD, so I don't want to totally concrete shoes him yet. He DOES get into the offensive zone, and him and his linemates have
historically bad on ice shooting %. You think of some of the chances they could have buried and this might not be a conversation--grundstrom post last game for example--but results matter at some point too. But like you said, a lot of the eye test stuff does NOT jive--lots of one and done, bad forechecks, turnovers, just
ineffective play if not a liability (though I'd argue he's becoming a liability due to not scoring), and other teams are starting to take advantage by loading up against the other lines. In theory, this is what we wanted--free him up to run amok in easy minutes. But he's performing in easier minutes more poorly than Stoll did in massively harder minutes. We need to figure something out ASAP.
I do suspect he ends up on the wing and as someone mentioned above maybe we pull an O'Reilly or someone at the deadline to be the actual 3C. He can be a good defensive center as evidenced by the stats--but that's not what he's being paid for. We need production.
