At the end of the day, he is just not producing.
That's the thing. For a guy that only sees even strength time, his metrics are good. Twabby can elaborate if he wants, cuz the fancy stats sites give me dry heaves.
And even when he played with talented linemates, he wasn't producing.
Same thing. He flies under the radar at evens like Connolly did a while back. The numbers are there, just not at a 5.7m clip. Without knowing what's going on behind the scenes (because there could be some big behavioral/personality clash thing with the coaches or whatever), the choice is to either positively reinforce the things that are working and showing up on the stat sheet and metric sites or punish for the things that aren't working. Lavi has chosen the latter.
And again, it's impossible for us to know if that's the best choice. Lavi doesn't appear to have lost the room, so it makes sense to trust him for now. The team is playing well overall.
It's easy for me to say, "Why is Mantha sitting when Eller screws up more?" And there are some decent points to be made there. But it's just as easy to say, "If this is about a talented guy's erratic performance, why doesn't Kuznetsov get the whip sometimes, too?" No matter which way you look at it, whatever's actually going on seems specific to Mantha.
