He is not "good" defensively and nobody with any credibility or without obvious bias has said that he is. There is always a caveat that is relative to expectations for a tiny, weak dman who struggles mightily with his pivots. Much like the "he moves well for a big man" caveat, Lane get's the "defends well for a little guy" caveat.......neither example actually means that the big guy is a good skater relative to the average skater nor does the latter statement infer that the little guy is a good defender relative to the average defender. It takes some serious confirmation bias to overlook the obvious truth in these statements.
To be clear, much of defending is effort and IQ based and he is aces in both categories.....unfortunately he has enormous physical hurdles that he needs to clear in order to be able to defend at the next level. He still gets beat in an ugly fashion too often and loses too many battles relative to other top D prospects his age. Who knows, he may dramatically improve his skating and have an unlikely growth spurt that could push him to a more palatable level of defending but for the here and now......he would get embarrassed in the NHL and people need to understand that before referring to him as an elite D prospect and as being on a potentially Makar level development path.
I am content to watch him display his offensive wizardry and be happy with him as a late 2nd round swing for the fences but he is doing exactly whet I thought he would do this year as did many other scouts....he hasn't really begun to answer the real questions yet and that will take time and patience. So let's keep it in our pants and act like we know something about hockey people as the hyperbolic drivel is just silly at this point.
