Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkGio
How do people come to the conclusion that Brouwer is "fine" in a specific role? He was given powerplay time, significantly more minutes than other players in the bottom six and better linemates than other players in the bottom six but still failed to produce and had terrible possession numbers.
If anything, we can conclude he will be severely worse given less minutes. What player in the history of hockey made improvements when demoted?
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It is not about making improvements or getting him to score more goals. Of course with reduced TOI and opportunity, his stats will negatively affected. Of course.
What people are saying is that Brouwer was fine as a 4th liner, but underwhelming whenever Gulutzan played him above that, especially on the PP. As a 4th liner, Brouwer is a fairly decent player who stood up for a few team mates over the last couple of seasons, and played fairly strong defence.
Nobody is expecting an increase in goals playing STRICTLY off the 4th line.
As for the RFAs today, remember that this has nothing to do with how negotiations are going. This is a safety mechanism for all of them to ensure that they make available an agreed-upon tool. If they didn't file, and then suddenly negotiations went south, they would not be able to use arbitration to remedy a contract impasse. So nobody freak out.
Also, Treliving was a very busy body traveling and trying to sign these UFAs, and he had stated that the focus will now shift to the RFAs. I would be surprised if any actually end up in arbitration.