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Originally Posted by Anduril
What's the difference between being sheltered and being used in advantageous situations? I'd imagine you'd want your most offensive players to get as many opportunities in the offensive zone and against weaker opponents
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Your success shouldn't be coming at the expense of your teammates' success, because that lessens your impact. Guys like Burns and in the past Karlsson are great in the situations they are put in, but need someone else to carry the load and create those situations for them. We saw this firsthand in its purest form with Dion Phaneuf on our second pair getting Norris accolades. The minute he was asked to play a true Pronger type role he fell and the team apart. Burns is having a great season, one for the ages. But that is helped along by Vlasic-Braun and Schlemko-Dillon being excellent pairings that play a huge part in their success. It's the same with Panarin-Anisimov-Kane as a forward line... they depend on Toews and Kruger to get them high ground, and the production of Toews and Kruger is less impressive as a result. Same with Carter's line in LA and the Monahan line for us.. Kopitar and Backlund do a lot that keeps their production down. When the Backlund line, or the Marchand-Bergeron-Pastrknak line, score it's naturally less often but in context more impressive TO ME than the Anisimov line scoring.
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Although you could spin it and say it's because they're incompetent in their own zone and can't stack up against competition. So how do you draw the line?
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There is no need to draw a line so black and white as "competent" vs "incompetent". Good players are good players but having some context can go a long way. Again back to the Phaneuf parallel. Was Phaneuf ever truly the second best D in the league? Was he still pretty much always a solid top 4 guy with a hell of a point shot? Where do you draw the line? You probably don't; the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. As for Burns I believe he is dragged down by Paul Martin but is having an amazing season and pretty much playing a style of game I freakin love. If he won the Hart I wouldn't even be mad. But to me a strong D pair starts with shutdown play, and that for the Sharks is Vlasic-Braun.