I’ve changed my mind on him a lot over the course of this season.
After we acquired him at the deadline last year, I liked his physicality and stay-at-home style, but wasn’t fully sold on his overall impact, thought he was a bit of a “jack of all trades, master of none.” Liked him in the series against Tampa, was very physical and generally solid, but I thought he had a pretty poor series against Florida, where he really struggled against their forecheck.
Then I soured on him a lot more early this season. I thought he had a real rough start … but in retrospect he was doing his best while paired with an absolutely massive liability of a D partner in Klingberg. I started to change my mind when I went through replays of all the goals against he was on for, and while he made some mistakes, mostly he was just constantly put into bad positions trying to cover for Klingberg. He’s been a solid 2nd pairing dman since being paired with anyone else - physical, reliable defensively, and seems to have taken a step forward in terms of his offence and puck moving too. He’s a good dman on a terrific value contract.