Well its way too early too tell and he was rushed into the NHL b4 he was REALLY ready.

I saw him alot in Oshawa(b4 his trade) and loved him but his defence always was a linguering problem and was really the reason he dropped so far in the draft.

He's hit a massive sophmore slump this year and all aspects of his game have suffered. While you wouldn't find me singing the praises of his defensive skills I think many of you are making too much of that for this point in his career.

Take last season for example, I watched a ton of Rangers games and to me he looked like a pretty typical rookie defenseman, making the type of mistakes you would expect...sure it wasn't pretty sometimes but it was hardly unexpected. Yes he was a team worst -20, but you can't read too much into that...Callahan (-12) and Drury (-10) are probably their two best defensive forwards so +/- doesn't tell the whole story. But perhaps more importantly the big thing I saw from him last year was effort, even when he would get burned he was TRYING to make the right defensive play, or if he got shake n' baked in the neutral zone he would bust his ass trying to get back to recover...I'm not seeing that from him this season and I don't know why. Also, just to point out how useless +/- can be as a stat, MDZ is even this year and if anything he has regressed defensively.

Of course this is all sort of a moot point in a fantasy world...we don't so much care if he sucks defensively if he puts up 50 pts

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Thats me on the street with a violin under my chin, playing with a grin, singing gibberish.





P=1 DPts=1.2 +/-=.32 PIM=.08 PPP=.4 SHP=.6 S=.015 Blk=.2 Hit=.08
W=2 OTL=.8 GA=-.64 SV=.08 SO=3

Pro (23 keep 17)
C- Filppula,Turris,Stastny,Backstrom
D-Boyle,MDZ,Karlsson,Robidas,Goligoski,Schenn,Seiden berg
G-Anderson,Hiller,Rinne
LW-Malone,Parise,Rolston,Eriksson,Ruutu
RW-Alfredsson,Callahan,Setoguchi,Brown,Ryder,Vrbata

Farm (9 keep all, max 200 GP, 100 Goalies)
Colborne,Leblanc,Loktionov,Perreault,Tangradi,Blum ,Poulin,Markstrom

MDZ was rushed in to the NHL a little too quickly IMO. He played well offensively last season, enough to gloss over his average defensive game. This year he's not getting it done offensively, thus his defensive issues are being highlighted far more. He needs to get a few games with the Whale instead of sitting in the stands, that'd be far more beneficial as it'd at least allow him to get in to some kind of rhythm again.

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12-team H2H; Keep 10.
Categories; G,A,+/-,PIM,PPP,SOG - W,GAA,SV%,SHO

C - Stepan, C. Wilson (/LW)
LW - Ovechkin, Ryan, E. Kane, Kunitz, Whitney, Sullivan
RW - Malkin (/C), Gaborik, Eberle, Simmonds
D - Yandle, Suter, Shattenkirk, Salo
G - Luongo, Crawford, Khabibulin, Rask

He needs a trip to the farm

Agree. Needs to get some confidence going. He proved he could produce at NHL level. Just needs to work on the defensive side of his game. I was happy last year to see him produce so fast but he should have worked on his D in the AHL... never has been very good defensively...

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24 teams Sim Keeper League
G,A,PTS,+/-, Hits

C = Thornton, Krejci
W = Pominville, Hartnell, Hudler, Versteeg
D = Karlsson, Letang, Campbell, Boychuk
G = Holtby, Vokoun

Farm = Scheifele, Marincin, de Haan, Gragnani, Knight.

MDZ's been sent down to the Whale, absolutely the correct move. Hopefully he can regain his confidence and his game down there. McDonagh up, by the way.

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12-team H2H; Keep 10.
Categories; G,A,+/-,PIM,PPP,SOG - W,GAA,SV%,SHO

C - Stepan, C. Wilson (/LW)
LW - Ovechkin, Ryan, E. Kane, Kunitz, Whitney, Sullivan
RW - Malkin (/C), Gaborik, Eberle, Simmonds
D - Yandle, Suter, Shattenkirk, Salo
G - Luongo, Crawford, Khabibulin, Rask