Brodie Boosters in shambles. But seriously, are we done blindly stashing faith in this guy's ability to turn it around? He seems to be getting noticeably worse with each passing game. Hamonic is very clearly better than him now.
.... No he isn't? Brodie had a stellar game on Saturday night, which was marred only by a bobbling puck skipping over his still while he tried to pass. Yes, that's still on him. No, it didn't make it a horrible game for him. You know who had a quiet two games in a row these last two games? Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. Who kept getting completely shut down by Brodie and Hamonic in turn with great defensive play after great defensive play. Yes, Brodie failed to clear a puck on the PK last night. Backlund had one 4x as bad, but Brodie is the flavour du jour.
I hate to do the old "pass the buck" thing to have to defend Brodie, but it's definitely worth pointing out to showcase the levels of hysteria. The worst play of the night was actually Douglas E. Hamilton last night when he decided to get sucked in like a moth towards a lamp when the puck was bouncing in the high slot in front of three charging Blackhawks, all while we were protecting a one-goal lead late! Led to a 2-on-1, and he takes a penalty on top of that. Awful, awful read, and against a team with a more effective PP, could have had serious implications.
It's funny the pattern you'll find when you watch one player with a negative outlook. You'll find mistakes every game. It's pretty unsurprising that it works that way, though, because there isn't a player in the league who doesn't make mistakes. Some make more, some make fewer, but as a top-4 defenceman taking top opposition matchups on the road, Brodie's positives have far outweighed his negatives for a very long time. At $4.5M, he doesn't need to turn anything around. The only people who need to turn things around are the people who think he needs to be traded if he isn't a Norris candidate. At $4.5M, a defenceman who can take top matchups and shut down top offensive players while factoring into the offence is 100% worth his price tag, and would be a huge hole we'd need to spend significant cap to fill. I know we're currently working hard to cultivate this reputation of being a knee-jerky and panicky board that turns every mistake into a narrative and every narrative into an uRGEnT need tO fIrE sOmEOne NoW!, but surely it's not that hard to see what's going on in your collective perception and avoid getting sucked in.
