I could care less about hurting his feelings, if he ever registers on this message board I'll tell him I feel shame.
It wont expose anyone as Hutson and Guhle are the plays that are going to absorb those minutes.
Hutson will play 30 minutes a game? Guhle will play 25? Guhle is already fragile and Hutson has about as many minutes as he can handle.
Why would we play a 3rd pairing LD for 5 minutes a game? You can easily do something like 23-21-16 without issue. Top 2 pairings starting next season should be Hutson-Struble (with more offensive starts) and Guhle-Carrier (more defensive starts). If Struble shows that last year was a fluke playing with Hutson than we can reevaluate, but Matheson doesn't fit anywhere into that top 4. 16 minutes a night against medium competition though? He'd probably do a lot better.
They can play the 7-8 minutes more that the 3rd LD cant. Its as simple as that.
It will be a telling summer, we have effectively reached maximum capacity of Quartexx contracts and we need to make improvements on the roster.
Yeah at this point there is already too much cronyism but results didn’t matter as much… now they will so even a few more crony moves will utterly stink.
Is there actually a rule somewhere about how many contracts/players you can have from one agent company?
Matheson played more minutes than any other D. Hutson was already playing 25 minutes per game by the end of the season. Guhle and Carrier were a bit over 20. Savard is gone, and he was getting old, but the D looked bad when he was out.
No but if we're going to make improvements on the team, some Quartexx guys will need to go this summer, there's not much room on this team no more stockpiling friends
I wouldn't say we looked worse with Savard out of the lineup, he was noticeably our worst defenceman (with the exception of Mailloux)
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He was definitely done, but the team struggled when he wasn't available, at least until they got Carrier. The D is really young and thin. They may constitute a strength once they reach their peaks, but it was a weakness this year. They really need to add at least one more good over 23 D if they want to compete next year.
If we fail to add a top-4 RHD then I wouldn't be surprised if they sign a fringe guy who could end up either on the bottom pair, as 7th D, or even sent to Laval all depending on how training camp goes for Mailloux/Reinbacher. Obviously you're hoping one if not both come to camp and show that they are ready for the NHL, but I'm not sure you can really pencil either of them into the lineup so having a backup plan makes sense.
