There aren't many criticisms of this mgmt team, but the construction of this defense absolutely is a valid one. A blind man could see this would be our weakness going into the season, and its only been exacerbated with severe regressions of certain defenders and now this injury. How mgmt allocated their money on defense at free agency is looking to be an error.
Gillis once said you need at least 8 NHL calibre defenseman. I don't think we even have that when we are all healthy. We have one top pair and a bunch of bottom pair defenders, some playing at an AHL level. We are not one top 4 defender away, we need at least two.
I have said it several times. This isn't even supposed to be our year. This is a gap year where we try to make the playoffs while waiting for Willander and Lekkermaki to be contributors.
We have Hronek (when healthy) and Myers who, selective memory aside, entered the season having had a solid season last year and signed for less than he could have gotten last year.
RD2 is being reserved for Willander long term, so signing a Roy or a Walker was never part of the equation. We just have to ride it out.
Now, we are indeed missing an LD who can be interchanged with Soucy for pairings two and three.
But those acting like this happened because Allvin had no plan just don't understand the long term thinking required. You can't put like 15 million into your RD and then bring in a guy like Willander who we hope will be worth 6-8 million one day himself.