Bad player by your standards*
Anyone who makes it to the NHL gets there for a reason. Oilers think of him as an upgrade over Desharnais and targeted him early in free agency locking him up for 3 yrs. He may not be more than a #7 at NHL level but he is far from a 'bad player' by my standards
Bad player relative to other NHL players.by that logic we can never call any player in the league bad and they are all elite.
That's not what relative stats do at all.
A player in a defensive role is almost always going to have worse team metrics than guys playing in offensive situations with more talented players. One number that ignores all context of usage isn't going to tell you which player is doing a better job at their role.
If you are giving up far more than you produce you are not doing a good job in your role. Thats a fact. Good defensive players produce little offense but give up even less. If you are giving up way more than you produce you aren’t doing a good job. Even average defensive players are looking to give up as many chances as they get while in their ice.
And yes if he was being used in a tough defensive role against top 6 guys sure. But he wasn’t.
I hope for the best for him but he is a worse player than Desharnais, is older and preferably he is a guy who is used only against weaker teams that might try and start shit. He shouldn’t be a regular.
Other then fight, what does he actually do well if you are so optimistic on him?
He is 30, doesn’t move the puck well, doesn’t defend well. Not a good penalty killer. He can punch faces I guess?