Eh, I don't buy the bolded part. RNH is not a small or particularly weak player. In fact, he was at his best when he was at his smallest and weakest when he first broke into the league.
I donno what the issue with RNH is, but to me it seems to be between the ears, not a lack of size/strength. You look at the type of moves he made as a rookie and the confidence in which he handled the puck and won battles and threaded passes.... and that's mostly been gone for the better part of his career since that rookie year. He had a great stretch last year where some of that seemed to be back, but that didn't continue forward this year.
His offensive creativity is seemingly gone. In an attempt to solidify his defensive play, he's turned him into a north-south mucker, and that's just never going to be his game. And on top of that, he hasn't even gotten better defensively. He's arguably gotten worse. He use to make up with his lack of size in the defensive zone by being tenacious on the puck and being able to take it away from just about anyone. He doesn't do that anymore really. He sort of just looks lost and misses his assignment in the defensive zone waaaaaaaaay too frequently to be considered a solid two-way player at this point.
I don't want to be too hard on the guy, he can definitely be better, and needs to be better. But he's probably playing himself off this team right now his subpar play through 1/2 this season.
