Can a Canucks fan explain to me how del Zotto has been terrible for them this season? Looking over his numbers it looks like he's been outperforming almost all their guys on the back end, suppressing shots, and driving play decently well. His penalties taken isn't good, is that what the big thing is?
Because Luke Schenn is not an NHL player in any sense.
I could be off on this a little, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my impression of his time in Vancouver.
Last year, he got tons of ice time because of injuries. He handled the extra ice decent enough at first, but then faded as time wore on. But still, if he played less minutes, he seemed like an decent stopgap while the Canucks rebuilt.
I think all that ice time last year got it into his head that he was a bigger man on campus than he actually was. First he went all old-man-shouting-at-clouds and spouted off about teammates playing video games, which led to video games getting banned on the road.
Then when the season started, he didn't play well at all despite what the analytics say. When you watched a game, you'd see him make glaringly bad plays at the wrong time that would cost them goals. Green gave him a long stretch of games to figure it out, but he never did, so he sat. And any time he got back into the line up, he didn't improve, and it didn't seem like he had the will to fight through things.
Green always gives players enough rope to hang themselves. But if you're willing to battle through things, he'll always give you another chance. I mean, this is almost a mirror of what happened to Hutton last year. Dog house last year. A dependable fixture on the blue line this year playing tons of minutes during injury and playing well.
