MS
1%er
Just watched the game. He wasn't as bad I feared after reading some of the comments. Got a bit unlucky with some of the calls. The ones on RNH and Pederson were kind of soft calls and the play on Lavoie negated a quality scoring chance.
Perhaps what it suggests is that he needs to find a better balance in his defensive play where he knows how long he can hold or hook up to the edge before it triggers a call from the referee. But otherwise, he was doing the same things he was doing before: a low event partner for Hughes at evens with decent outlet passing.
He wasn’t catastrophic but he was taking penalties because he was reacting and a step behind the play.
There is just absolutely no way this player is ready to play top-pairing NHL minutes and there is equally no way we should be wasting our Norris-level 1D by playing him in soft minutes babysitting a rookie.