Remains to be seen if Smith will be a bright spot.
But I think we need to give him every opportunity. In fact, he should have left college a year earlier and started last year in the NHL with guys like Lidstrom and Stuart to tutor him.
You know I wanted him up last year so he could benefit from a team that still had Lids (and Stu), but more importantly... it was well-greased. You learn better from things that work than those that don't work.
I'm fairly comfortable in saying he's going to be a bonafide top four, as he's already got a better set of tools and skating than most of the guys on the team now. I hope he's going to be great top 2 at least, but some smarts come into play here. Right now, he's still too excited, and too raw to realistically judge the mental side of his game. I look at this way. At his age, it's easier to teach him how to view the game, the tricks to look for, the angles and positioning than it is to refine his skating and shooting and passing. He has that stuff down, imo.
Instead, he's learning from Kyle Quincey.
It's astounding to me that a guy can play as poorly as KQ did tonight and lead the team in icetime.
Yes, but what you aren't considering is that he's the only guy on the team right now that routinely plays all situations. He may not be the best PP guy, but he can play on the PP. He may not be the best PK guy, but you can put him on a PK unit. You can also use him as a top four ES guy. Now, obviously Kronwall is the better defenseman, and he too plays all situations, but Babs may be ramping him up. Normally, you have your top minutes eaters going 24+ min per game. The one thing that having CC and White around is that you can rest the other guys up a bit more and spread the minutes out more among the three units vs focusing on your top four.
And yes, this year's roster is a direct result of 3 years of Ken Holland kicking the roster transition the can down the road.
And, if you think it looks bad now... wait until next year.
Nah, I think this year will be bad enough. Fortunately, it's only a partial year.
I'm looking forward to the buyouts that will need to happen around the league.
Ericsson has never been GREAT at anytime in his career.
He's an average defenseman at best who will always be at a disadvantage because he learned the position so late.
I have to believe this a Babs' Big Body requirement.
Any idea what the Red Wings goal differential has been since KQ joined the team?
That's a bit unfair though. They traded for Q probably because they were screwed defensively. Wasn't most of the top half of the line up out with injuries when he showed up? The worst two months of the Wings' record last year would still have been the worst two months had they not traded for Q at that time. Heck, it could have been worse.
We both predicted a fairly poor playoff result, but that too wasn't because they added Quincey. That old roster was just that-- old, predictable, everyone knew their tricks and the team had no answer for that.