I agree with you totally on the bolded. I think we disagree in that our defence has a better opportunity to display these qualities in the playoffs given our personnel and style of play.
I hope so, but many are not things that this personnel and system have done better at thus far. We're really going to have to hope that Carlo can improve the PK especially.
We haven't had as good a shutdown pair as Tanev and McCabe in the Matthews-Marner era. They are going to log a lot of minutes.
I love both of these players and what they've done this season, but I don't know that that's true. I won't get into some of the more controversial examples, but at the very least Muzzin-Brodie is comparable.
We haven't had a No. 3 as good as Carlo.
We've had better #3s than Carlo. Brodie and McCabe have both spent time as our #3s. Carlo is actually our #4 though, and he probably is the best #4 we've had. But that's really the only number that's gotten better and a few have gotten worse.
OEL has Stanley Cup experience as our fourth and we hope we see playoff Rielly this year. Benoit at the very least brings physicality to the defence.
This 3rd pairing is my biggest concern in terms of the defensemen. Benoit has really struggled this season, and physicality is nice and all, but it has to accomplish something to be worth something. OEL brings some experience and much needed offensive attributes to the defense, but his defensive struggles have kind of flown under the radar. I'm hoping that dropping him down to #5 will help him, but putting him with Benoit also forces him to his off side, which he has not done well with. These two also take a lot of bad penalties.
And it gets brushed off, but the defensive and PKing proficiency in our forward depth has really dropped off over the past couple years. It makes a difference. And I know people won't want to admit it, but for whatever faults you believe he had, Holl was a good PKer.
I think we both agree that goaltending is going to determine how well we do, but I think Woll and Stolarz would agree that the defence has been playing extremely well in front of them allowing them to play to their potential.
A lot always comes down to goaltending. On both sides. This season has been a lot of Stolarz and Woll covering up for defensive mistakes. If they can continue it in the playoffs, we should be okay. If not, we're in some trouble.
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