Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
I disagree. He only played better because he had Brodie and not Smid. He absolutely obliterated Brodie's effectiveness. The smart move in my hockey genius opinion, would've been Brodie and Schlemko being servings line and leave Engelland getting his 10 minutes on the third line.
|
What the hell are you babbling about? Who is arguing that Smid / Engelland = a 2nd paring defence. The fact that this is your rational shows just how out to lunch you are on what is important to this conversation or the debate. No #### Smid / Engelland doesn't equal Brodie / Engelland. And no #### Brodie is better when he's playing with the best defender in the league.
As good as Brodie is, he's not good enough to be a part of D tandem that is legitimately a 2nd NHL pairing in the NHL (which Engelland and him were last year) if his partner is hot garbage.
The only argument you have is to say "we don't know if Shlomo / Brodie would have been better because we didn't see it", but as mentioned before that's a pretty tough case to make. These arguments you have that Engelland made Brodie worse than when he plays with Gio aren't even relevant. Of course he did, no one is arguing he didn't. Smid, Shlomo, Russell, Wideman all would have done the same. Engelland proved he could step up and play Top 4 minutes "effectively" last year when paried with a legit Top 2 NHL D-man. At this moment, we cannot say with any confidence that any of our other options last year or this year competing for spots 5-8 on this club could have, and we haven't seen anything in pre season to date from any of them that comes close to putting Engelland's role on this club (5-7 d-man) in question at this point.