Look, KK is for sure smack dab deep in the sophomore slump this year, but Julien choosing to call him out after that loss in particular? That's a load of BS.
He made a mistake that lead to "the winning goal." Fine. But how many goals were scored to get to that point? It's not like it was a dogfight all night and then the kid got lazy and cost us the game. We gave up 6 goals in 35 minutes of hockey. We had one line that scored all of our goals. We had D giving up 2 on 1s and 3 on 2s like they were playing shorthanded all night. We had a goalie who is usually a lock with a big lead/on Saturdays bleed bad goals.
That's the gripe here. People may claim "no conspiracy" about the treatment he gets but that's why people are suspect. Cale Fleury's a rookie too, and he's made egregious mistakes to cost us goals this year (and this is nothing against CF, mistakes happen especially with rookie D). But does he get benched? Does he even miss a shift? No.
Same with Suzuki. I know he's the shiny rookie now, but his play with Tatar in OT the other night was baffling. Where was he going? Who was he taking? Tatar got blamed for that goal but it was as much Suzuki's fault than anyone's. Where's his call out?