No way DJ gives White defensive starts or top line matchup’s. how on earth do you project him as a 3C with those responsible wingers.
Are you aware that White is one of our weakest centers for puck possession or faceoffs ? he will get “caved in” in your roll and thankfully our coach knows better.
So a couple points;
1. Never said the 3rd line would be a matchup line or that it would be primarily defensive starts. I don't think we have anyone who fits the mold of defensive specialist so we will likely have to spread things out until someone establishes themselves in that role.
2. Responsible wingers are usually considered beneficial for young centers. Would you prefer we place him with defensive liabilities? I think Brown and Formenton add some grit that can hopefully rub off on White as he did bring that element in college.
3. What do you mean by weakest centers in terms of puck possession? Is this your personal assesment or are you basing on any particular metric? Typically CF is used as a proxi for possession and he lead regular center in that last year. While usage and deployment may be factors, there really is no clear favourutes remaining on the team.
4. His faceoff % was 47.4 which when compared with pageau who was the best on the team woukd mean 1 extra loss per game. While it would certainly be nice if he was above 50% he isn't a liability at the dot. In fact, if you take a more rigourous approach to evaluating faceoff prowess and look at his
elo ratings which account for the faceoff ability of the players they square off against, White actually does better than Tierney and Anisimov at the dot.
