As a bottom pair RD that can provide veteran mentorship. Detroit needs someone to play with Chiarot.
that's why you get gudas! Although my d-pairs would be:
walman - seider
ed - chiarot
maatta - gudas
Ed and chiarot were actually not terrible if you really just watch them on the lines together. Of course there were miscues and weird plays here and there because they only had what 5-9 games together and don't know each others full styles yet (and being a 1 game rookie didn't help either). But, towards the 8-9th games, you could see some chemistry forming.
The problem with seider - chiarot pairing was glaringly obvious. Seider in his first year, proved he was the 1D or about to be the 1D. Then Chiarot came in thinking he was the best D on our team because of age/exp or whatever he thought. With that, Seider was deferring to him routinely and way too often. Towards the end of the pairing before they officially stopped, you could see the frustration in Seider and how Chiarot was trying to be the back-end play driver with the first pass. He would also look like he is fully expecting the puck passed to him for zone-exit and looked somewhat visibly irritated that Seider did the zone-exit.
I get why they got chiarot and thought of him playing with seider because Seider would have a real veteran with a lot of experience to help round out his game. It wasn't a terrible decision, especially at the time, but by doing so, Seider was able to prove that he was "HIM" and chiarot needed to settle the fuc* down. When Lalonde either figured this out or finally made the move, you could see the elevation in Seider's game back to last year.
Ed has no reason to think he is better than chiarot even though we all probably think he is. But, he has some education in the NHL still to learn and having chiarot was proving to be helpful in those later games.
With all that being said, a pairing of Maatta and Gudas (or I guess Mayfield, I would have to defer to people who have watched mayfield play because I really haven't) would be excellent because you have two guys that are defensively sound, Maatta knows how to pinch in at the right times and keep the puck in the o-zone and gudas is there to protect our younger players that are most likely on the 3rd and 4th lines. If gudas is outplaying his position, then switch him with Chiarot and round out more of Ed's game with some real physicality (i know, ed does have some physical stuff, but learning how gudas does it would be extremely beneficial).
