That's a pretty knee-jerk reaction, don't you think? Ericsson's having an excellent sophmore season. He's been great on the boards and around the net and hasn't been making nearly as many bad pinches (aside from that one last night). All you can ask is for young players to get better each year and E's definitely having a much better season this year then last.
i'll agree that he's playing better than he did last year. but that shouldn't be too difficult to do, should it?
I mainly just wish he'd be more physical out there. I watch a fair amount of Kings games and I wish we had a bottom pairing guy like Matt Greene. He punishes guys along the boards constantly, shoving them into it over and over, but rarely takes a penalty. Ericsson definitely has the size to add that his game. He's gotten better and pins guys, but doesn't crunch them very much.
i think the problem here with E is that he has to learn how to do that without taking penalties. i've seen him try to be aggressive but to me it always looks like he's swinging wildly at the guy and is going to take a penalty. he's certainly big enough to play that style but he needs to learn how first.
The most interesting thing I see in those stats is that Kindl is averaging 0:54 of PP time per game but has 0 pp points this season and only 1pt (a goal) in his 25 games this season. In only 0:10 of PP time a game, E's at least got a pp goal to show for it.
i don't think anyone knows why kindl is on the PP. sometimes i think his slapshot tops out at 75mph. he's probably there because babs doesn't trust E to actually BE at the point on the PP.
anyways, i didn't mean to single out ericsson. i realise that he's a bottom-pairing guy and he gets paid like one so you can't expect a lidstrom-like performance from him. it's just that there are times when he looks confused out there and it's frustrating to watch.
