Really? He seems like a really solid player who at $3.4M on the cap for next year as well is a bargain.
If he's a #5, he's the best #5 in the league. He's played far better than a #5 since we've gotten him.
I think that he has more offense to give than what he has shown. Ideally we'd get a couple of new RHD to play on the right side and have Ekholm-Walman-Nurse on the left side next season.
I would say 3-4 and high event at that. he comes as advertised, but not as how people were building him up to be some top pairing D. He's sure not that here. He's a guy that can make some plays, have some hands and a player like this looks better on a shit club because he can take gambles and it doesn't matter. on a club where every play is more important he can't and shouldn't take the same risks here. Problem is he's not alltogether reliable. He has less offensive upside than Booch and my look is he makes some bad decisions with puck. The book that I've read on Walman is high event D that makes some head scratching decisions.
Has quicker feet than Bouchard. That's a quality dimension for a defenseman's overall game. Decision making appears to be as bad as Bouchard's.
They haven't let the guy get comfortable at all. Played him with everyone, both sides etc.
Yes, he's had a few bad plays. The defensive play of the team in general has been pretty awful leading up to the Calgary game.
His usage is fine and exactly what we should be doing with him. The only issue is that him coming here coincided with injuries to many key players, including Ekholm. That has meant that he's been played with different people, but we want to explore that with any new player
Agreed. I know the Ekholm injury complicates things but I would staple him to Nurse for the rest of the year. If it doesn’t work out then fall back on moving Kulak there. Enough shuffling.
But its chicken or egg. Walman is a vet D with tons of experience in his hockey prime of life. He should be able to come in and adapt. One reason for the bouncing around is that nothing has really worked. Walman would bare some partial responsibility in that. Couple things to look out for with Walman is he's not seeming to spot who's on ice for opponents. He tends to make the same risk/reward plays regardless and I prefer D to play a bit more according to what line or players opposition has out there. he' not big on making the safe plays. He likes to play the puck, and he likes to try to make the pretty plays. That can be problematic of course in playoffs.
This will be one of our very few disagreements. I think as fans we are hyper critical of our own. We focus on every mistake, even though this is fairly the domain of D. The D are not helped here either in that we have rather weak goaltending so any mistake they tend to make ends up being punished more, and thus magnified in GA highlights as well as in our minds. I think actually a lot of our D, Eckholm, Nurse, Booch in that order do a commendable job in all they do clean up in terms of rebounds, rush defense etc. All 3 are better defensive D than Walman is.
