How often do you watch Yandle, serious question. I have a place in Scottsdale so get to catch yotes game fairly often. While he is no defensive stalwart, in my opinion he's better than Smith, Kindl, Ericsson the way he's playing this year and XO as of now.
A decent amount, center ice and all. I generally put on a late game, have Dallas and San Jose on right now. I don't just watch the Wings though they obviously come first on the nights they are playing.
Not a huge fan of watching Yotes games because I cannot stand Tippett's system. However, he has always struggled against top flight players, he is easily exploited when asked to check anyone of significant talent.
Kindl didn't dress last night I give Yandle an advantage there defensively.
Smith does a better job in the corners and in front of his own net than Yandle. Who also could barely hit his way out of a wet paper bag. Yandle has a really bad penchant for wandering, but I can see people preferring him to Smith, really the complaints that are at times manufactured out of an outright frustration in Smith around here would be the same in terms of watching Keith Yandle play defense and that is with the honeymoon period it would still be hard to watch him play with his head up his *** in the defensive zone for large stretches of the game. At best he is a wash in terms of pure defensive ability I think he is worse, though his offense would be a significant upgrade, I said I would include Smith in a package for him in this thread. Which is hard for me, I like Smith, but honestly I would like to see him move on for a better opportunity at this point.
Ericsson is lightyears ahead of Yandle defensively. I know people hate his outlet passes and whatever else as one of the resident whipping boys, but if Yandle had one tenth of Ericsson's positional understanding and physicality in front of the net and in the corners, he might get mentioned in Norris conversations because while still bad he would at least be passable enough for the award at that point. Keep that in mind, for all his points the entire hockey world seems to crap on his defensive game sans Lombardi sticking up for him in a half hearted attempt in terms of Team USA there is a reason he is left out of that stuff. His defensive game is that bad. Cannot PK, cannot play his offside, relies on speed alone to get the job done. It does a lot of the time because his skating is that good, but he allows just as many glorious chances as he creates if not more and Babcock
hates that.
