Exactly. So why is Mantha drifting off in neverland while his point man is jumping up in play? His coverage is already blown. He just stood there hoping the puck bounces out to him. It doesn't. The other team wins the puck battle and scores.
Mantha floated around there the whole team while 5 Monsters players collapsed on the play to score a goal.
My point remains the same, Mantha should not be rewarded for his lazy play. I'd rather Ken Holland call up Aubry at this point since AA is injured.
I've never played at a high level, so maybe I'm out to lunch on this. But isn't the idea that if you're a winger and your man pinches in, an opposing forward is supposed to come back to cover for him? And when that happens, the forward isn't supposed to come in to cover the D, nor is the defenseman or center supposed to come out to cover the forward who's now at the point. Instead, they're supposed to switch, right?
But in this case, the forward never comes back to cover. So the question is: what is a winger supposed to do in that case? It seems to me that it would be very easy to be completely wide open, and you'd potentially have a breakaway. Or you could come back and help pick up the extra man.
My observation is that whenever the Wings try to do that second thing, they get scored on. Too many men down low makes it really hard to sort out coverage, and often creates the kind of traffic that helps with garbage goals and deflected point shots. Plus there's nobody to make a breakout pass to. Everybody is down low, and it's harder to get it out without just airmailing it out. On the other hand, it seems like whenever the Wings have a wide open guy like that, they usually make good on it. True, there is one guy doing nothing for a minute, but he's also wide open to make a potentially huge play.
I guess it ultimately comes down to what you want from Mantha. My suspicion is that if you've got a very offensively skilled guy who's already just okay defensively, you don't really want him coming down low and complicating things for your defensemen. You want him wide open for that chance. Instead of doing something he's bad at, you get him doing something he's very good at.