opendoor
Registered User
- Dec 12, 2006
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He probably never will be. If the Canucks decide to keep him, his contract will be adjusted accordingly this off-season or they'll let him walk because he is not going to be qualified. If he's as bad as some people think, it should be fairly easy for another player to beat him out for a 5-6 role next year and then he's a #7 if he's kept at all. As I said, he's been very good on the PK, the guy gets the fewest ozone starts of any Dman on the team.
People can make the numbers say whatever they want, especially if you shrink sample sizes and disregard the stats that don't support your argument.
Is 5 years enough of a sample? Because in the last 5 seasons Sbisa is 191st among 193 regular defensemen in relative GF/GA and both of the guys below him are out of the league.
And the fear isn't that no one will outplay him; it's that like this year he'll still get regular ice time despite being the 7th or 8th best defenseman when everyone's healthy.
Team has much bigger issues than Sbisa anyway.
I don't see this lineup juggle as anything more than a coach trying to shake the team out of it's current funk. Nobody is being rewarded, it's just that no one is paying particularly well at this point.
Edler-Tanev have been excellent and Hamhuis-Corrado looked OK too. So splitting them up seems pretty counter-intuitive. Thankfully it doesn't sound like that's happening