"He's sick. He came in today and he had a fever so obviously real precautious, try and look after that."--Head Coach, Mike Babcock
Head throbbing, Brett? Feeling nautious? Now you know how we've been feeling when you're out on the ice. Now, I would never wish an illness on any of my Detroit Red Wings, but the inconsistent (heavily favoring the "bad" end of the spectrum) play of Leba has me more than a little worried each time I see him take a shift.The pairing of Lebda with Ericsson baffles me. Niether one of these defenseman seem to have the know-how or ability to cover for one another, which is terrible considering they both love to jump up into the play. Putting Ericsson with Lidstrom and Lebda/Meech with Stuart seems to make the most since. Kronwall and Rafalski make a nice pair as well. But putting two, young, offensive-minded D-man together has been the recipe for disaster. The pairing of #22 and #52 are a combined -9 so far this year.
Time to move Lebda down to the "4th" defensive pairing.
ReplyDeleteI'd be glad to see Meech sent down to GR and Janik brought up as 6th defenseman. Lebda could be 7th defenseman.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that the two of them combined are sucking something fierce, the -9 is a bit of a misnomer.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the two of them on the ice at the same time during even strength situations, and you count the "+/-" for them as a pair, it looks like this:
3 goals
1 assist
4 points
-1 rating
In terms of points, the Ericsson/Lebda pairing is 2nd with 4 points, and 1st in goals. That said, they aren't producing enough offense to offset their crappy defense.
For fun, here's the other pairings these two are on:
Stuart/Ericsson: 0G, 1A, 1PT, +1
Ericsson/Meech: 0G, 1A, 1PT, -1
Rafalski/Ericsson: 0G, 1A, 1PT, -1
Lidstrom/Ericsson: 0G, 0A, 0PT, -1
Kronwall/Lebda: 1G, 0A, 1PT, E
Lidstrom/Lebda: 0G, 0A, 0PT, +1
Stuart/Lebda: 0G, 0A, 0PT, E
Rafalski/Lebda: 0G, 0A, 0PT, -1
Lebda/Meech: 0G, 0A, 0PT, E
More of these fun charts at motownwings.com, because I have nothing better to do...
I think the problem is that Lebda sees his end as a defensemen on the Wings in the near, so he keeps trying to audition for forward.
ReplyDeleteHe is also probably the one engineering the injuries to rest of the forward corp.