Our blueline sucks, and every non-Anderson goalie we've seen so far in an NHL uniform can't hack it long term. McKenna has been as good as we possibly could have ever imagined, but he's going to regress back to his old self eventually, which was evident last night.
The fact that we outright waived Condon like 2 games (for him) into thr season suggests that there was, at some point, a lack of confidence in him before we got to the point of waiving him. These things are a process. Why not sign a more dependable AHL guy than a 37 year old journeyman?
Oh, and our blueline sucks. Like, really bad. Boucher is a problem, but this is a skill issue, too. DeMelo is at best a mediocre 2nd pairing guy, more likely a good 3rd pairing guy, but he's been carried on the 1st pairing by Chabot, our only legit top-4 defenceman, who is making Melo look miles better than he actually is.
Lajoie should be a 3rd pairing specialist at this point in his career, but we're all angry he's not getting more 2nd pairing minutes... And that's not his fault, or the fans fault, it speaks loudly about our lack of literally any other options.
Ceci, who even knows with that guy. He'll have a game where he looks really good, followed by two games where he looks like a tourist on the Canal who has never skated a day in his life. He's a top-4 defenceman like 30% of the time, and a panic machine the rest.
Jaros is young, and makes young defensive mistakes. Expected for a player with his experience, but he needs to be sheltered by guys above him in the lineup until he gets more NHL minutes under his belt, and he's not getting that support.
Harpur is at best a 6th guy. Nothing wrong with that, but we're just acknowledging his limitations here. He's not an answer to our top-4 woes, and never was. I'm just glad he seems to have learned from last season's disastrous season.
And Boro... Another guy who is a #6D at best, but plays way higher on this limited blueline than he should and gets thoroughly punished for it. On a blueline that is built on skill instead of payroll, you have one of Boro or Harpur. Not both. Having two guys like that out there who play that kind of game significantly limits your options.
So what do we have as our defensive assets, assuming they are playing where they should be?
We've got a good 1st pairing defencemen in Chabot, a "probably ok" 2nd pairing guy in DeMelo, a total trainwreck of a 2nd/3rd pair tweener in Ceci, and then a half dozen guys who currently shouldn't be anything more than 3rd pairing filler.
Of course the blueline looks bad this season. That's because it is bad. We were able to surprise some teams to start the year with a new system, but that edge is gone and we're now seeing what this blueline really is.
Also: how we haven't done a damned thing about our goaltending since waiving Condon is borderline negligent. We made a mistake on the Condon contract. It is what it is. Just accept it and find an actual NHL caliber backup goalie. Finding backup-quality goaltending has to be just about the easiest thing a GM can do (based on a very deep pool of NHL-caliber backup goalies vs only 60 NHL goalie jobs up for grabs), so the fact that we haven't yet done anything suggests either GM incompetence, ot a lack of willingness to pay for one. I'm going with the latter.
