Quote:
Originally Posted by HighLifeMan
I'll admit I bought into the narrative that Canucks fans were selling about Kuzmenko being a purely one dimensional player and defensive liability without digging into it, but I am not so sure the numbers suggest that at all - especially in comparison to a guy like Boeser who everyone seems to be in love with all of the sudden. He may not be a strong two hundred foot player and may cheat at times to create offensively, but I certainly don't see a liability by any means in these numbers.
And yes.. I know many of you don't care about these numbers, but to me they highlight that we may have gotten a much better player than many of us originally thought.
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No one was selling Kuzmenko being a defensive liability? Other teams fans were. Flames fans were when he was being brought up as something being moved in a deal for Lindholm. His issue in Vancouver wasn't how bad he was defensively. The issue was he wasn't scoring. He wasn't playing well in Tocchet's system in the offensive zone. It makes his disposition to have defensive lapses less tolerable.
If he was scoring at 20-25 goal pace while forechecking properly no one would (including Tocchet by his own admission) give a #### he loses his guy or gets puck watching in the defensive zone from time to time. That's just never something he was going to be perfect at.
He puts a lot of effort in to be good defensively. He just isn't that good at it. And that's fine.