deadhead
Registered User
- Feb 26, 2014
- 49,215
- 21,617
Baloney. It's just your way to pretend to sound open-minded but confirm your own biases. I've said this before, but it all comes down to one core central argument, which is a mindless appeal to authority, i.e. these guys are professionals, so they must know what they're doing. The problem with that is that the track record on this is glaring, i.e. these guys way too frequently make poor or questionable decisions, decisions that literally any bozo walking around South Philly in a Gagne jersey who has never so much stepped foot on a sheet of ice can see upfront are poor or questionable. I do not pretend to have a direct line to god or Fletch, and admit I'm a f***ing moron, and yet somehow the professionals couldn't figure out that Brandon Manning sucked and that Travis Sanheim should have had his ice time but I could. It's infuriating.
In 2017-18, Manning didn't suck.
CF 50.57%, xGF 48.23%, CFrel +1.34, xGFrel -1.30, [better than Ghost this season]
not great, but pretty typical for a #5 defenseman - he was fifth in ES TOI that year.
Of course, Hextall wasn't fooled and moved him out after that season.
Sanheim struggled as a rookie, got sent down, then paired with Gudas on the 3rd pair in a sheltered role.
Put up good metrics in that role, but when he got promoted to the first pair with Provorov, those metrics substantially declined, evidence that they were partially an artifact of that role.
Bringing a young defensemen along slowly isn't "stupidity," it's proper development.
Had Sanheim been given a top four role as a rookie he probably would have cratered, he wasn't physically or mentally ready for that kind of responsibility.