HTFN
Registered User
- Feb 8, 2009
- 12,266
- 10,898
I really don't know what point you're trying to prove here.
1.) Neither Siegenthaler or Kempny are actively dragging down a defense pairing the way Johnson did. Notice how Gudas' stats don't fluctuate by 5-10% at a time depending on his partner the way adding Johnson to Schultz does (or Letang, or anyone except maybe John Marino for some reason). Letang's CF% goes from 45.98% to 58.13% by playing with Dumoulin instead, 52.1% with Marino, I shouldn't need to explain why that's more significant than leaping from 51.09% to 52.99%.
If anyone wanted to coin the term "Shot Oppression Defenseman" this is probably what it looks like.
2.) You want to pretend that this is Gudas being "freed" from Siegenthaler and Kempny, and not Orlov being a good defenseman. If anything the only thing he's being freed from is the responsibility of making any offensive decisions himself. Dig the puck out, get it to Orlov, break out. It's nice having a balanced pair like that with clearly defined roles instead of rolling Siegenthaler-Gudas and wondering which one of them will bravely chip the puck out of the zone next.
3.) This isn't some big secret that Gudas is okay anyway, Gudas was a serviceable #4/5-ish guy in Philly who had Flyers fans saying "I know what it looks like but he can actually play, we were surprised too". Give him a partner to handle the puck, keep his job simple, and he's not fast enough to keep up with the best but he does okay enough of the time. You trying to spin him into a puck mover is bizarre, but really this whole comparison is out to lunch and nobody was calling Gudas "done" like they are with Schultz either.
Maybe I used my brain to think about what some of these numbers meant and wound up surprised, instead of coming in with an axe to grind and doubling down.
