Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRed
Look forward to seeing what Coleman brings. He's a sorely missed dimension in the top 6 and will be very noticeable.
Not looking forward to #58 being scratched.
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Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how limited his ice time was in the Edmonton game. In his 3 minutes and change, he had a nice rush skating the puck out of the defensive zone and got it out and deep, another play where he made a great pass from the half-wall into the slot for what may have been/could have been a good scoring chance, and then had a couple of great plays breaking up the cycle deep in their own zone. He seemed to be skating well and making a positive impact, but then ended up sitting most of the rest of the game.
I wonder if some of skating and puck possession was counter to the game plan and systems/structure that Sutter was looking for? It looked effective, but maybe wasn't what the coaching staff was looking for from him?
Not sure.
But regardless, he did look like the odd man out the other night. Which was somewhat odd because none of the defense other than Gudbranson looked all that great. I know Sutter's comments yesterday suggested that Anderson was their best defenseman but I thought that was Gudbranson. Kylington has clearly taken steps, and that's been acknowledged by Sutter, but he doesn't appear to have fully earned the coach's trust yet.
And that's too bad because he has a skill set no one else in the top 6 has, and one this team could really use. We saw flashes of that in Edmonton.
Hopefully he can do what he needs to do to earn that trust and playing time. I suspect it's a matter of utilizing his skill set within the set system the team is implementing.