And I think most of us would be ok with this with one gigantic exception....dg should be playing less minutes against worse opposition...the limited sheltered minuets for a replacement level player...instead he's being matched up against John tavares and Vladimir tarasenko. Most of us don't hate dg....most of us hate the coach for the way hes used if at all, and the gm who gave him that abhorrent contract.
1. Celebrating a guy's pain *is* hating the guy. We are not talking about some ISIS terrorist whom you hate and could legitimately be happy he got injured. This is a guy who did nothing but honestly earn his money by working as hard as he could. He never took a shift off, he played injured, he never complained, he took the most difficult assignments against Ovechkin, Cindy, Tavares, Stamkos, Kane/Toews, and every other top player, and quietly did his job. He fought to protect a teammate until several of his facial bones were broken. Yes, he got paid for his job, but he never took his money and ran. He took his money and did the most he possibly could to earn his paycheck. At 32, playing a shot-blocking game, you will start to deteriorate. This is not out of laziness, stupidity or poor attitude. There's no reason to be happy he's in pain, none.
2. What are the options here? McIlrath can't go up against top opposition because he can't defend one-on-one against Cindy, Ovy, Tarasenko, Tavares, etc. He can barely defend 1-on-1 against a guy like Brock Nelson, and will fail at it a bunch of times. Klein can do it and a line of McDonagh-Klein would be effective, but that would mean Staal-Girardi/McIlrath as the second pair and I doubt that would be a good idea against a second line, many of which have really good players like Malkin and Backstrom (Oshie replaced Back on the first line for DC to spread the wealth).
Staal-Girardi would be an excellent third pair and McDonagh-Klein a solid first pair. But then who's the second pair? Holden-McIlrath? Holden-Skjei? The only option is to have one solid player on each of the first two pairs along with a vet in Staal or Girardi, hoping their brains can overcome their body limitations.