I'm far from a Fabbri basher, but hes has the 3rd worst +/- among the forwards on that atrocious team and has accumulated that total in about half as many games as his teammates. He's -12 through 14 games, which is real bad. There is almost certainly a lot of bad luck in that number, but he is also an expected -4.6 in that stretch, which is also very bad. Having defensive stats among the worst on a team of guys who are terrible defensively is absolutely indicative of poor defensive play.
I think defensive ability has, and always will be, best determined by actually watching players play. There's simply no substitute for watching someone and breaking down what they're doing on the ice, and their relative culpability in the goals against that are scored when they're out there. Defensive advanced stats for the NHL are far cry from being as meaningful as those of, say, the MLB...and we both know +/- related stats have more than their share of warts.
All that said, I don't think many people are of the opinion that Fabbri is some great defensive player. At best, he's adequate, and his value defensively tails off the closer he is to his own net.
What does it even matter? Fabbri's value was never tied up in his defense, and I feel like people who try to define him by that ability are kind of missing the point. His value was tied up in being a driver of offense who was able to create chances for himself and others. That ability is much rarer and more precious in the NHL than the ability to play defense, especially now as the game has opened back up again. Guys like DLR (sub 12 minutes a game, adequate defense, next to no offensive ability) are interchangeable replacement level players, and there's no shortage of their type at the bottoms of NHL rosters and in the AHL.
I don't really want to dig into why, but the bottom line is that Fabbri wasn't driving offense here, so his value here was low. If he's driving offense better in Detroit, then he's more valuable to that organization than someone like DLR, full stop. As for the Blues side of things, I honestly don't think DLR brings any more value to the organization than Fabbri did. Probably less, even, since Fabbri at least had some potential value locked away inside him that
could have been tapped under the right circumstances. Is there any appreciable difference between having DLR on the ice over say, an AHL guy like MacEachern, or even a PTO guy like Brouwer? DLR doesn't generate offense, or even contribute much to pushing the play down the ice. He's far from a shut-down defender himself, and he's no special teams ace. He's just a warm body and you're going to do your best to limit his minutes to the bare minimum you can get away with. If the Blues had a healthy roster, he's fighting to not be scratched any given night, just like Fabbri.
