Looch has been a defensive liability all season. His zone exits are botched most of the time because he can’t complete passes around his own blue line (even though he’s surpringly good in the o zone doing so). Even tonight he loses his check on the d-man on the first goal and lets him walk right down the slot. Goal took a dumb bounce but it was still a dangerous chance that he shouldn’t have let happen. His backchecking is not great either, he has pretty frequently been the guy that should have had the trailer that ended up scoring on a rush.
That being said, i think these issues are compounded by playing with Rooney and Ritchie, who are equally bad defensively, and somehow offer even less offensively. Lucic still has some touch despite the stone hands, and when he’s skating his forecheck is more threatening than those two. Lucic is just fine as the 12th forward on the team, the problem is that there’s too many 15th forwards on the team already.
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Oliver Kylington is the greatest and best player in the world
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