Losing both Fabbro and Tolvanen for nothing is unacceptable. Were they lighting the league on fire no. Were they better pieces than what we had or have in the lineup at the time they were waived, absolutely. People saying, they weren't that much better so it's ok. Sorry, if they were better and made the team better and we squeezed a couple of more wins out of this team, then that's a net plus.
We complain we don't have a great middle 6. Tolvanen would've fit in nicely. He became a responsible 200-foot player with some physicality. He put up 41 points last year and while he hasn't gotten off to a great start this year, I'd still take his 5 points in limited action to Smith's 2 points. Keeping a guy around who can score .5 ppg is a lot better than keeping guys around who score .25 ppg.
In the case of Fabbro, he's a better player than Schenn and while I get the veteran leadership and the mitts Schenn can bring to the lineup, bring back Jeannot if that's what you feel you need. Having a lumbering defenseman back there does nothing to help the team yet we spend all this time developing Fabbro to let him walk? Maybe he didn't show enough piss and vinegar in his game for the coaches. This begs the question, if you're re-signing him to the contract you did only to waive him this early in the season, was he a backup plan in case we couldn't resign Carrier? If that's the case, once again, just dumb. While I like Carrier to some degree, he gets destroyed in the playoffs because he lacks size and teams eat him alive. Heck, even Lauzon lost his edge last year entering the playoffs. (Could've been hurt, which is my guess)
So why oh why do we continue to ice undersized defensemen when you need better, larger size guys for when you do make the playoffs? Maybe in writing this we were right in dropping Fabbro because he's not that much larger than Carrier.