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Old 08-13-2019, 12:11 PM   #41
Superfraggle
First Line Centre
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dino7c View Post
people pay to read this garbage?
The Athletic puts out a lot of good stuff. Agreed that this particular article is absolute garbage. You can't look at the player in isolation, as others have stated. At the start of last year, you have penciled in:

Giordano - L
Brodie - R
Hanifin - L
Hamonic - R
Stone - R
Kulak - L
Andersson - R
Valimaki - L
Kylington - L

So, without a crystal ball to anticipate the injuries to Stone and Valimaki, you expect Kylington to start in the AHL, but if you think Valimaki is ready then somebody else has to move in order to keep it down to 7 defensemen in the NHL. That's either Stone or Kulak.

It's great in retrospect to say that Stone should have gotten the boot ahead of Kulak but at that point he was already a stronger defenseman, who was considered to have a higher upside. Plus a right-hand shot, whereas Kulak, Valimaki, and Kylington are all left.

Holding 8 healthy d-men on the NHL roster is not a good long-term plan, as there isn't enough ice-time to go around. Moving Kulak made sense in the context of the time whether or not you believe they were doing him a solid.
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