Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
Yes, they are a lot less frequent. And rookies don't come packaged with smart little things that tend to take years and years to develop.
You guys are looking at the young D-men through different lenses than vets (looking too hard for flaws in vets while ignoring them in young guys). And FWIW I'm all for getting the young guys in there for a bit now, but most defencemen not named Doughty or Ekblad do their real development in the AHL (and occasional cups of coffee in the bigs are helpful).
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I'd really like to see turnover stats for Wideman compared to Wotherspoon an d Nakladal. Visually, it seems like Spoon and Nak make much less turnivers and mistakes than Wideman.
However I think your argument is a bit flawed. Most aren't talking about replacing Wideman with young dmen who aren't ready (say Kulak, Kylington, Andersson), people are talking about replacing Wideman with Jolipakka (a guy with 100 NHL games), Nakadal (a guy who is closing on 30 years old), and Wotherspoon (a prospect who has 3 seasons in the Ahl and will be waiver eligible soon).
I agree with what you are saying regarding the masses' desire to replace the old vet with the shiny new toy but I think In the case of Wideman, there is good reason to make the change because in summary 1) Wideman has never been good defensively, 2) there are 3 guys ahead of him who are equal or better offensively, 3) there are 3 younger, bigger, and cheaper guys who are at least on par defensively to Wideman.