Endlessly not losing is overstating it. They are on the road. Everytime Lavy sends out Sprong, Butch counters with Pastrnak. So, my read is that Lavy wants to avoid losing for that one shift and move back trying to win with the next shift.
As for Schultz and TVR the dynamic is opposite. That is trying to win. Its keeping to the established identity of the team. Lavy plays a 5 man attaack unit with the defensemen fully involved. He needs offense from his defense. TVR has 3 pts this season. Replace the #2 defense offense producer with TVR and the only d pair that can provide offense is Carlson and Orlov.
Do you think Lavy should scrap his team style and put something new in that fits those two pairs better? A more defensive style?
No, I understand all the pieces in a vacuum, but let's be real here, Carr shouldn't move the needle over Sprong having watched them both. I'm not actually speaking
to TvR and Schultz but exactly as you said, the dynamic is opposite. He needs offense from his defense and is willing to play a player with more defensive liability because of his offense.
That's the point, it's robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes down to it.
The question is why that's more acceptable on your second defensive pair than your fourth forward line. If what they need is offense, it should be
both Schultz and Sprong. They should be trying to feed off of each other. Instead, possibly because you've dressed Schultz and feel a need to cover him (we speak about the five man unit and constant rotation) you take away Schultz's weapons because he needs to be watched. Rather than setting your win condition and building your team around it, they're stretching parts of the team identity to try and cover all the gaps, and there's no guarantee that's any better.
It's all a very long, nebulous "calculation", but I know you're a baseball fan and that's a sport that deals with this sort of thing more frequently. At some point, you have to play offensive players. You can mitigate defensive risk but it will always exist, because even the best players aren't perfect, so you have to look at the statistical likelihood that you can outperform what you project will happen to your defense. You have to keep your bats around even if they're defensive liabilities, and at some point you pinch hit them for your defensive guys if you have to because defense won't win you a game you're already losing. Right now the Capitals aren't getting that done and they aren't playing some of the players that have proven to punch above that level, so they need to initiate.
