Monday, November 9, 2009

Lebda Sick

...and not in that "oh, that was a sick move" or anything.  Via the Detroit News:

"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.

4 comments:

  1. Time to move Lebda down to the "4th" defensive pairing.

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  2. I'd be glad to see Meech sent down to GR and Janik brought up as 6th defenseman. Lebda could be 7th defenseman.

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  3. While it's true that the two of them combined are sucking something fierce, the -9 is a bit of a misnomer.

    If 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...

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  4. 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.

    He is also probably the one engineering the injuries to rest of the forward corp.

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