How do you know he lacks attention to detail? How the **** do you even know what the detail is? How do you know what the structure is? Is TMAc asking him to leave the zone early to provide a breakout? I've seen Kovalchuk back check quite often and also cover for pinching defensemen, in fact he may be one of our best wingers at rotating to the point. I can't think of many times when he shied away from defending the point off the top of my head.
As for you saying there were 3 goals directly attributed to his lazy plays, I don't think that is fair.
For the first Sutter goal he did fumble a deflected pass, but it was not clean and he got caught from behind. He was in on the back check following the steal and that was not a case of him being lazy.
He was on ice for the Miller goal, where he was covering the front of the net when the puck deflected off of him, I honestly hope you are not blaming him for this one.
The only other goal he was on ice for was the Tanev goal, he was in deep and ended up being close on the backcheck (though he seemed to let up once the pass was made across).
The best I can give you for him being lazy was the Tanev goal, but he wasn't going to catch up anyways.