If you watch the game again you will notice there were a large number of rebound chances knocked away by Detroit's defensemen.
Again, that's one game. It's a larger problem I noticed a lot last season.
Agree to disagree I suppose. Defensemen don't HAVE to destroy a guy to nullify him from making a play. And I don't think a depth defenseman is going to change that a helluva lot if he only plays <10 minutes a night.
Of course they don't have to destroy them. And it's harder to do in the new NHL. But that doesn't mean they should be able to just plant themselves by the far post untouched, which happened often last season.
I think Salei will play more than 10 minutes a night. Lebda averaged 13 to 14 minutes a night, and that was Lebda. Lilja averaged between 14 and 17 the last couple seasons. Plus as Babs pointed out, he thinks Salei can handle 20 minutes (not that we'd want him to).
It's obviously not a solution, but if he plays that way 14 minutes a night, some of it on the PK, that's an improvement.
You can't clear someone out anymore if they don't have the puck. It's called interference.
I honestly am not sure what to say to this. It's certainly been notched back in the new NHL, but it still goes on. Think of what Homer has to deal with every game. And when he does have the puck on his stick it's for less than a second. There's a lot of battling that still goes on and is not called a penalty.
No but it is a start. That means there is one more guy on the roster who will clear it instead of standing around stick checking guys infront of the net, which is a very bad way to play defense during a scramble. In a scramble youre better off having the other team on their asses.
This one guy is here to mentor Ericcson. If Ericcson starts doing it then we have a defenseman with solid top 4 upside going forward who will clear that crease in the future. Also if guys like Stuart and Kronwall hear Babcock praising guys like Ericcson and Ruslan for clearing the crease like they do then you might just see guys like Stuart doing it a lot more.
Its sort of like having someone like May in the lineup this past year. He filled his role fine but also rubbed off on other guys like Cleary and the team as a whole just seemed to be playing tougher. One guy on defense could rub off on a few other defenseman and have our team crease clearing a lot more.
This may not be the only problem with our defense but it is definitely something that they are horrible at and improving it is only going to help the team. The future looks bright for guys that will do this though so we just need to wait for guys like Lashoff, Kolosov, Nicastro etc
What he said.
