Agreed Stanley has made it to the HFBoard Jets HOF of whipping boys joining the likes of Pavs, Thorburn and Stuart.
Honourable mention to Beaulieu, Kuhlman, Chiarot was not popular here either, largely seen as a puck moving problem and an obstacle to Niku's development ark. Little got shit on a lot too, especially in the Ehlers-Laine years, and Tylers Myers too, in the Joe Morrow era. But that is the HF way, that all PMD defensemen are good, Enstrom, Postma, Niku, Heinola, and PKers are irrelevant, unless they have some kind of Samberg like overall impact. Toughness is a non measurable quality, so almost an afterthought.
Just from my eye test, Demelo has been worse than Stanley recently (I realize there's probably a disparity in QoC tho)
Compared to the rest of the D, Stanley leads in GF% (except for Heinola who has a relatively small sample size - but has also been paired with Stanley, which is weird) and his xGF% is only behind JoMo
So are we only using those metrics to bash the top line and heap praise on Ehlers? Are we gonna "well, yeah BUT..." them? Or maybe do we need to ask ourselves whether or not Stanley *just might* be not as bad as we've led ourselves to believe?
Just random stat watching I notice De Melo's Corsi has gone from the 43s to 46s in recent weeks, and Morrissey is on an incline too, so there are probably some supporting stats that say they are the steadiest pairing since Samberg went down, as Pionk's numbers have plummetted conversely.
Stanley is down there for shots against, so the stats are probably true. His PKing metrics still haven't reached Miller's depths, but he's going backwards. Most people think he is the weakest link, and it's probably true. But if the Jets can win with him, there should be some hope that they can play even better without him.
Yes, it gets overstated. Debate brings that out. So does frustration. He is our 8th or 9th best Dman but he gets played like 5.
