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Originally Posted by PeteMoss
And he stayed elite when he stopped playing with Brodie while Brodie collasped.
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Maybe that's because we spent major assets on acquiring another defenseman who is one of the better 5v5 players in the league. The amount of credit Dougie Hamilton doesn't get is baffling.
Of course our top pair was better than our second pair.
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Meanwhile the guy who played with Brodie last year and struggled has completely turned his game around with a new partner.
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There are a dozen factors that played into the overall struggles of that Brodie - Hamonic pair. It can not be broken down into something as simple as "Giordano carrys Brodie". If Hamonic is as great defensively as people claim why couldn't he "carry Brodie"?
Here are the things that factored into that pair's struggles:
- Hamonic individually did not play very well for half that season.
- Brodie individually had the worst ~two month stretch of his career - that includes many other months without Giordano
- Brodie is more comfortable breaking the puck out on the right
- Brodie is offensively more creative creating offense on the right
- Gulutzan's offensive system never worked for Brodie, period. In fact it barely worked for Giordano either. The only guy who benefitted from that system offensively was Hamilton.
- Hamonic is an offensive black hole which never worked with Brodie who would always set up Hamonic only for that to kill possessions because Hamonic can't shoot. Hanifin doesn't set up Hamonic as often.
- Gulutzan's slow breakout never worked for Brodie because he is a skating defenseman who likes the long pass
- When that pair actually did start to build chemistry and individually play well, team offense dried up, masking their strong play. And this stretch of strong play together was cut short by Ryan Reeves ending Brodie's season