Hivemind
We're Touched
A lot of this is, objectively, simply not true. Karlsson was not sheltered, his deployments were almost perfectly in line with league averages in terms of opponents faced. Letang's match-ups were not out of line compared to his past career, and he's had previous seasons with tougher match-ups than he got this season. In terms of their shift locations, they're basically identical. Letang had 7.68 Def Zone Starts/60 while Karlsson had 7.49 Def Zone Starts/60. Letang had 8.59 Off Zone Starts/60 to Karlsson's 8.53 off Zone Starts/60. It was guys like Ruhwedel, Graves, and Ludwig (and to a lesser extent Pettersson) that Sullivan was burdening with D Zone starts.Yeah firmy disagree. Karlsson was playing severely sheltered minutes, and he pissed away their season with woeful and untimely poor defense.
With Karlsson taking the favorable minutes, that thrust Letang into a more difficult defensive role.
Karlsson was simply not a good fit from day 1 IMO. Letang already played the role of PMD with offensive upside. Pens should have been seeking a shutdown defenseman IMO. It would have been a more valuable piece given that they already had Letang.
Arguing that Karlsson wasn't the right fit for the Penguins is a fundamentally different argument, and has some defensible logic behind it (even if not everyone would agree). But that's a very different argument from claims that Karlsson is bad defensively.