Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
It was more than that.
The Flames started to overvalue Andersson on the bottom pair even though he was playing unimpressively. He got promoted to the Gio pair and was surprisingly solid against some lotto teams like Anaheim and Arizona, but this affected the team style of play.
Peters started playing mindgames with Brodie. That's your defenseman #2 being replaced on your top pair by a guy who is probably playing at the level of a #5-6 defenseman that year.
The blueline went from one of the fastest (both in terms of defensive foot speed and in terms of offensive playmaking from the backend) in the league with around 22 minutes of Brodie, 20 of Hanifin, and 13ish of Kylington, all on separate pairs to around 16ish minutes of Brodie and 20 of Hanifin.
That's a net loss of around a period worth of non-PP1 icetime lost to more static players.
It's easy to dismiss, but it was evident back then, and it was evident last year when we lost Brodie to UFA (even though Tanev is not a bad player) and continued to forcefeed Nesterov. And it's overwhelmingly evident this year with the readdition of Kylington how much having players like that helps the team's style of play. They played for Sutter last year too, but never looked this good even with Giordano.
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Or is less words it wasn't the Fantenberg Aquisition.