Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Brodie's fine. His plus minus in the Detroit game just made people over-fixate on small valley in a season of peaks and valleys. I bet if you looked back at his East coast road trips over the years he has played his worst hockey during them. He plays his best hockey in conference games and playoff games IMO as he has a better internal scouting report. He idea that he needs a night off is just sendationalism at its finest.
That said we are misusing him. He is not a shooter yet we have him manning PP1 as the point option. He is a great skater and elite stretch passer yet we have him playing D-to-D with Hamonic and making 10 foot passes to our wingers. He is incredibly deceptive and accurate on his backhand yet we have him play his strong side where he telegraphs plays more often.
|
I disagree with the first half of your post. The Detroit game was not the beginning of TJ’s defensive struggles this season. For that matter, I think you could legitimately argue that the Detroit game was more unfortunate for him than anything. But he has been positionally disorganized for several games this season. It is unlike him, which is why several of us have pointed it out.
Having said that, I agree with the second half of your post. I think he has been charged with a number of tasks that have taken him out of his comfort zone. Because of his skill level, I expect that the coaching staff see him as being the guy to step up and anchor the second pairing, like Gio does for the first, which is why they broke them up in the first place. However, I wonder what might happen if they reunited him with Gio for a bit, just to allow him a reset and to regain confidence.