There's a difference in the scratches. Ghost was the classic coaches scratch to give a kick in the ass, whether you believe in that sort of thing or not. Hagg was just scratched and nigh forgotten about because he's the worst defenseman on the team. Even when he's in, he's getting the fewest minutes. I can give AV credit for not Hakking it up and playing Hagg like he's some shut-down juggernaut.
Better than Hak is an extremely low bar though. Like getting robbed is better than getting murdered.
He's still done a terrible job of overusing Hagg because using Hagg at all is a problem, even if it's less than what we were seeing before. The fact that he held Ghost out longer than intended because he thought the Hagg-Myers pairing was playing well is a problem and the fact that he's also scratched Myers for Hagg a few times is a big issue too.
Ideally, Hagg isn't even on the roster and the fact that he's still here is on Fletcher. But for AV to actually deserve praise I think he'd have to literally never use Hagg unless he absolutely had no other choice... and that's just not the case. I don't think merely recognizing he's the worse D on the team is enough. He should be treated like Stewart because as far as I'm concerned he's equally as valuable.
