Igor Shestyorkin
#26, the sickest of 'em all.
jake may well be some what miscast in the role as top pair matchup guy. his instincts sometimes are questionable and he seems occasionally slow to process fluid situations- which happens sometimes in ice hockey lol. but for the most part, hes done very well. he eats minutes, coach finds him dependable and he stays out of the box plus hes been healthy. he can log a ton of ice and play both PP and PK. sounds like a top pair guy to me.
the problem is his partner. brady hasent developed and those 2 together are sometime a comedy of errors and that translates directly into ghastly goals against.
this defense continues to struggle at preventing dangerous scoring chances become they just yield too much ice and back in as though they are being taught to do just that.
its as though stepping up and getting burned is the only consideration and thus, they step back and give space.
to me they play a very passive protective system almost like there are 2 marc staals on every pair and they all play like staal plays. dont go up ice, dont get caught flat footed in no mans land and dont step- do something stupid- and create odd man chances against. they play afraid.
you listening lindy ?
Brady is definitely not the problem, he's been perfectly fine this year lmao(as frustrating as he is sometimes). Lindy Ruff is the true problem, everyone and their mothers know that. Maybe Quinn has a hand in it too, hard to say.
The only D-man we have that's had the ability to defend the blue line this year is Fox. But even he's started to back off a bit more lately. Another problem is that this D is rather slow. Fox isn't a great skater, nor is Trouba, and we know how Staal is. Skjei and DeAngelo are the best skaters we have on D. Hajek is a good skater and Lindgren is pretty good with it now too, but those guys all have other big limitations. ADA can't actually defend, Skjei is a little empty-headed sometimes, Hajek has flat out sucked at everything this year, Lindgren has done alright and has shown some flashes of being steady but his results still aren't anything great. Not having recovery speed can be really detrimental sometimes. Difference for Fox is that he has the IQ to counter it with exquisite positioning.
But circling back to Trouba;; personally, I like him but don't love him. Can't really pass the puck that well, isn't overly skilled. He can rip shots and hasn't shown the ability to be a shutdown defensive player this team could use. Not at his price tag. I think I would see things a lot different if he was making 6-6.5M instead of 8M.