Butcher has made progress...but his skating is just so ugly that I can't be a believer until proven otherwise.
Yeah and the skating is one thing that has a ceiling that will never lift. But within that ceiling he is playing much more solidly and much more intelligently too in our end. He's one guy who isn't often making the really awful coverage error. He's one guy who isn't repeating his mistakes, in other words, who is learning. And - despite his diminutive size - he's winning or drawing one-on-one battles against much bigger and stronger players, like the huge Columbus forwards last night.
On the other hand, I think his usefulness on the power play has regressed. Other clubs have learned what he is trying to do and they are all over him. Both when he's QB'ing the play in the offensive end and especially when he's trying to carry the puck for a zone entry. They've jump him and he's become shy of the pressure, bailing out so as not to give up the shorthanded opportunity.
But generally the problem with our defense is we can't skate. That's the reason we miss Moore so much. Vatanen is a markedly substandard skater. Ends up on his ass one third of the time. Did you see that forward go around him last night, leading to a holding call? Butcher is slow of foot. Greene at this point has just blown whatever tires he once had - he's existing on wits and positioning and stickwork, which is why he gets totally burned whenever he needs to match up with someone in open ice. Lovejoy has never been known to move his carcass particularly well. It just goes on and on. Santini doesn't look like he's got great wheels either, to be sure. (So why are we investing in him, if he doesn't have the basic facility we need?).
Sevs at least can skate. Thus the immense investment over several years in patiently trying to let him develop.
It's a skating game. It takes time to develop players but the question for Shero is, are Mueller, Yak, Sevs (as he continues to play) capable of developing into the kind of defensemen we will need to be truly competitive going forward?
Here is where dumping Lou (literally forcing him out) raises questions. Not that Lou hadn't fumbled the ball with roster development badly by the time he left and not that new ownership didn't need to get their own man in there, rather than someone who thought he owned the team. But the philosophy always was build from the back end out. Right now that's where our problems are.
