Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
Sure offensive zone face off starts as a percentage.
Takes out changing on the fly and points directly to deployment by starting the player on a defensive zone face off.
Miromanov was only above Hanley since the trade deadline for offensive zone face off starts. If you want to shelter a player you don't start them in their own zone for a face off if you have the option.
But even putting that aside ... you don't play a player with your best defenseman if you want to shelter him as that best defenseman is doing all the heavy lifting.
I mean sure he could help cover up for mistakes like Tanev does, but it doesn't work long time to put a guy in your top four if he's a 6/7.
For a 20 game sample size Miromanov wasn't sheltered, and was treated like a top four (arguably top two) defenseman.
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I think it is all moot anyway. This team had a decimated D core after the trades and had extremely limited deployment options to begin with. Whatever we saw down the stretch was a result and is unlikely to be the way anything looks again when the team takes the ice in September.
Miromanov looked okay at times and looked bad at times. If the point of the stretch run was to give him runway to grow by playing a ton I would say Huska achieved that and then some against what I saw was some pretty quality minutes and he showed enough from what I saw to be confident that he's an everyday NHLer with #4/#5 upside.