Quote:
Originally Posted by Five-hole
He's big (BIG=GOOD, as we know) and he scored a hat trick against us. He plays for Buffalo, who we almost never see. Put those together and you have a situation ripe for selection bias.
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I don't think this is entirely fair. First of all, your supposition of how little we watch Buffalo must simply be describing your own situation. Not to say that I am an expert in any way but I had Ryan O'Reilly in my hockey pool and watched a significant number of Buffalo games. Secondly, I wasn't merely referring to his goal scoring acumen, which by the way, was still at a clip, nearly half that of our boy Dougie.
What I like about him is his strength on the puck, his ability to block, hit and otherwise defensively quell plays in his zone. Sure he's inconsistent, he doesn't have a good ratio of take aways to give aways, but he's only 22 and has the potential to improve.
I'm not contending that he necessarily deserves to be slotted about any other defensemen on this list, (that said, is Slavin that much better?) but I do think he deserves a spot above at least Domi. Regardless, I'm not going to plant my flag and die by this statement. At a certain point it all gets pretty subjective.