He's partially a victim of a terrible PDO. But, he was used very specifically when he had success in Colorado (atleast the last couple years), which is something we can't give him unless he's on the 3rd pairing, or we download all heavy usage to Rielly and Ceci, and that is also a disaster waiting to happen. The other option is to move Dermott to his off-side wih Rielly and give them that usage, but I'm not sure that would work much better either.
I get we were in a jam with getting a top 3 defender who is right-handed, but he fit the exact profile we didn't need. We needed someone in the Trouba mold (I know that wasn't possible). We essentially needed a Muzzin who was comfortable on the right-side and preferably a right-shot.
Our problem with Barrie is quite a bit more sinister than that.
I think management/coaching saw Barries struggles quite early and Rielly/Ceci are already one of the top heavy use pairings in the league (and really excelling as of late) while Barrie has been flopping against 2nd pairing QoC pretty hard.
Hes been getting every opportunity to succeed and has been far less effective for the team against weaker usage than the Muzzin/Zaitsev combo was last year.
The PDO argument does have some relevance though as he has been really good at getting his shot on net this year and there been more than a few great saves, rebounds banged wide, etc. , making his point goals look a fair bit worse but his underlying stats are still so awful, there is no way you could say its merely luck here.
He needs to play his way out a this mess.
