Quote:
Originally Posted by HighLifeMan
Girard didn’t even average 20 minutes a game this past year while Lindell was playing 24+
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Yes... Badly. Playing time tells you nothing on its own. I could play 24+ minutes a night in the NHL, too, but the results would be ugly.
To be fair to Lindell, watching him in the playoffs, he is in a weird situation, so it's possible that if he was on a different pairing his performance would l level out somewhat. Basically, the only reason he played that many minutes was that they needed someone semi-reliable to actually play defence while John Klingberg was doing John Klingberg things. Klingberg is one of the best offensive d-men in the league, but he doesn't seem to think he has any responsibility to prevent opposing players from gaining the zone with possession, so Lindell has to do basically all of that duty himself, which inflates some of his rate stats (the blue on his chart above). However, he wants absolutely
nothing to do with the puck.
I think most people in Dallas expect that Miro Heiskanen is going to get Lindell's spot with Klingberg, at least to start the season, and we'll see how that run-and-gun duo works out. For Lindell it'll be interesting to see who he ends up paired with because if it's Roman Polak, suddenly Lindell will have to carry the burden of getting the puck to the forwards. I'm not optimistic about that, because while he may be a better puck mover than he seemed with Klingberg (he could hardly be worse), I doubt he suddenly becomes a standout in that regard.
In short, based on what he's shown, I wouldn't want Lindell long term at 5.8. I would want Girard at 5... I think. I definitely understand the position of a couple of people who prefer caution given he's 21 and doesn't have a huge number of NHL games under his belt. This is a risky bet, but I don't hate it, particularly because in those limited games he has been worth a $5m AAV. In other words, he doesn't even have to get better for it to be a good deal.
