Pavel Buchnevich
Drury and Laviolette Must Go
And if you go back to four years you have the abysmal stretch at the end of the 2021 season where Fox couldn’t carry Hajek and Hajek with Fox unable to stop him damaged Igor’s SV% like 5 points the last week of that season.Over the last 3 years, they’ve played 2721:40 together at 5v5. Fox has played 973:49 away from Lindgren, and Lindgren 609:28 away from Fox.
All of Lindgren’s numbers go down away from Fox, and all of Fox’s go up away from Lindgren.
If you would like to verify this for yourself, go to NaturalStatTrick’s line tool, set the date range to this season, and the previous 2, and look at the With & Without You tab. It’ll look something like this:
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I’d like to see Fox’s goals against numbers without Lindgren. I have no doubt his offensive numbers go up. Lindgren’s not much of an offensive player. And of course Lindgren’s numbers go down without Fox. Everyone’s numbers go down without Fox. That’s such an unfair way to look at things. There’s no way you can possibly win when you put it that way.
The question is whether Fox will play better over a long sample without Lindgren. I don’t think he will. The worry is defensively. If you just think Fox can babysit like Gustafsson or Jones or whoever, I think you will see his defensive numbers plummet. And paired with Miller might be better, but I think their styles might not mesh well. Miller’s been the aggressive offensive one on his pairing with Trouba. How would he adjust to being the defensive one?
If we have a player who can play top 4 LHD DFD minutes, I’m not against the idea that Fox can do well without Lindgren, but that player isn’t easy to find.