That long? Isn't he already Wranglers' best defence man?
I just think D-men take time. Take Andersson for example, whom I think had a similar career trajectory. Called up for 1 game in 2016-17, similar to Brzustewicz last year. The next season he played 10 games on the 3rd pairing with Kulak as a 21 year-old, which is what Brzustewicz is now. Then Andersson had an almost complete season on the 3rd pairing with Valimaki/Kylington/Fantanberg as his partner, while the top 4 consisted of Gio, Brodie, Hamonic, and Hanifin. Only in 2019-20 he became a top 4 regular, splitting his time evenly with Gio, Hanifin, and Kylington as his partners, though I think he struggled a bit going from a +17 on the 3rd pairing to a -7 in the top 4. It took him another year getting propped up by Gio before things fully clicked.
Brzustewicz is the best D-men on the Wranglers. Though Miromanov looks pretty good in the AHL as well. I'm not trying to take anything away from Brz, I just think that playing in the top 4 in the NHL is a very tough task. Hopefully I'm underestimating him, and similar to Coronato, he absolutely blows my expectations out of the water.
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Maybe Bean is traded, for a 4th or something. That'd be nice, even though I think he gets more criticism than he deserves here. IIRC his analytics are not bad. Maybe a contender is looking to get some cheap defensive black ace depth. With Hanley playing pretty well, and Kuz looking good, it's be a space clearing move especially when Parekh gets back after the juniors.
I always thought the neptoism factor was a reason he shouldn't be here - not that it was real, just that it made him an easy target.
This is just Conroy's way of keeping the tank on track. Bring up a player from the wranglers who is sick, get them into the flames dressing room and have a sick flames. Keep losing players every game to the sickness and get the ethical losing going again.
Chess not checkers :-)
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