Isn’t calgary deep on defense?
Not this year.
- Giordano is our best LD, and he's excellent. But he hasn't been very effective offensively this year as his shot just hasn't been dangerous whether that's on the powerplay or even strength. We badly need him to channel his Norris form. At least he's solid defensively though.
But he just got injured and we don't know how long or whether he'll be solid when he returns.
- Brodie is our best RD, and he's excellent. But he's a lefthanded shot and the coaches think that every time a LD gets injured it's time to plop Brodie back on the left side where he's not so excellent.
- Andersson is our second best RD, and he's pretty good. But he's also relatively unproven when elevated up the lineup and generally plays on our 3rd pair with the occasional bump-up game.
- Kylington is our second best LD, and he's pretty damn good. Occasionally has a rough outting with respect to turnovers which is typical for a high-skill D his age but overall he's a future star in the waiting and he's pretty solid right now. But he's also unproven up the lineup as the team mistakenly treats him with kid gloves instead of feeding him tons of icetime to get better and more confident.
- Valimaki is our third best LD, and he's pretty damn good.
He's also injured.
- Hanifin is our fourth best LD, and he can be good... but he's played too high up the lineup given his unspectacular toolset/skillset. His so-called smooth skating doesn't really tend to have the impact of the skating of any of the five players above him on this list, and his reads without the puck tend to err on the side of cringeworthy.
- Hamonic is our third best RD, and he's not what he used to be. I don't know if it's injuries, or mental, or just age-related wear-and-tear, but he's been unable to play an aggressive defensive game all year and it's been our team's achilles' heel because he logs top 4 minutes but has barely looked like a top 6 regular, if that. If this were Hamonic from a calendar year ago, it would be a different story. But sometime near the end of last season his play fell off, and this carried through to an atrocious playoff series and he hasn't been able to recover all year.
- Stone is our fourth best RD, and he's been sketchy at-best. Just doesn't seem to have the defensive hockey IQ or footspeed to be a net positive. When he's in the game and Hamonic is as well, that means they combine to be a cakewalk into our defensive zone. He wouldn't be the worst #6 to have if all the other five were great, but the struggles of Hamonic and Hanifin really magnify Stone's struggles.
- Yelesin is our fifth best RD. If you just asked "who?" - there's a reason for that. He's a Russian who's spent most of the season in the AHL and to call him unproven would be an understatement. Trading Adam Fox away along with Dougie Hamilton really cannibalized our right side depth.
- Davidson is our fifth best LD. He's actually a perfect depth piece. We may need to call him up with the Giordano injury. The biggest problem with Davidson isn't Davidson, it's the fact that he's a left D and rarely draws into the lineup with the team's inane decision to play Brodie on the left side or to never scratch Hanifin when he's being a liability.
