Two thoughts about the defense in Ottawa, which seems to be a neverending well for material these days.
(1) Paul MacLean made an interesting comment about the development of three of his younger defensemen in Eric Gryba, Jared Cowen, Cody Ceci, and Patrick Wiercioch. The pertinent part is below (via SE):
“In fairness to (Wiercioch), him, Gryba and Cowen as young defencemen in the league were expected to come in the league and we felt they were going to make strides and they didn’t, at the start,… MacLean said.“I think Cowen and Gryba have come a long a little bit better than Patrick has, but the play of Cody Ceci, coming up and being able to play in the league the way he has, is more of a factor with Patrick.
I've remarked about the improved play of Eric Gryba all season long, like here. He's totally changed my opinion of him as a player in one season, which is really a testament to both the player and the coaching staff for bringing him along. He's just fine in a third-pairing role. The only problem is he is very limited in the actual hockey skill department, so that's probably his ceiling. No harm in being a 5/6 D in this league, but there is probably a bit of a problem with how many 5/6 D this team has.
The opinions of the other three guys though sort of confuses me to no end. If it wasn't clear enough by the ice time and the healthy scratchings and the infinitely long leashes, Paul MacLean (or someone else above Paul MacLean) thinks much more of Jared Cowen than the rest of the hockey world does. I'm not sure why.
This horse is so beaten I'm reaching a point where I'm considering putting a moratorium on Jared Cowen talk. By most any statistical measure and the eyeball test, Jared Cowen looks horrific. Management's made comments in the past about how they just want this season to end for him so they can get him back to speed in the summer. I sure hope that works. This year's been a complete trainwreck and Ottawa really seems to be cutting off the nose to spite the face. I challenge anyone to make a half-reasonable argument that Jared Cowen's role in the lineup this season hasn't yielded negative returns. If the goal was to win hockey games, they certainly weren't pursuing best practice. If the goal was to develop players, well, that really didn't seem to work out well either.
I don't know what the future holds for Jared Cowen, but the present is that he's -- at best -- an AHL defenseman right now. So, whenever Paul MacLean (or, whoever) makes comments that he's "coming along" or "looking better and better" or any variation, I'm sort of stunned. Nothing's changed in his game, and the game-by-game screencaps of him just totally lost in the defensive zone, turning the puck over with reckless abandon, and generally having zero hockey sense are endless.
The hope is that he turns it around next year. I'm OK with that. I just sort of don't understand how that can be reconciled with "he's come along better" than Patrick Wiercioch.
Which brings me to Patrick Wiercioch. This is another thing I've really had little trouble grasping. Wiercioch, like a lot of other guys not named Erik Karlsson (and even #65 had his moments) early in the season, looked poor. But, for about three months now, Wiercioch has looked just fine in the minutes he's actually been given. I think, if anything, I've been disappointed by his offensive output and play in the offensive zone altogether than his defensive play. The objections to his game in the defensive third strike me as odd -- I don't really seem making many/any(?) mistakes of late, and considering the competition he has on the team, that should be enough for a regular appearance in the lineup. Perhaps he's simplified his game (thus reducing his OZ contributions) to fix this. I'm not really sure what it is, but he's looked just fine to me.
But here's the thing. Even if he didn't look fine to the professional observer, what is Ottawa benefiting from keeping him in permanent healthy scratch territory? If the argument for Jared Cowen is that he needs to keep playing -- curbing this team's chance at winning actual hockey games -- to improve long-term, shouldn't the same hold true for Patrick Wiercioch? And if the justification for Patrick Wiercioch is "best players play", again, humor me with the argument that Jared Cowen has, at any point this season, been one of team's six best defensemen.
Even the Cody Ceci point above is a bit odd. I like the kid as a player quite a bit, and I think he's clearly come a long way in the last year or two to look the part of an NHL'er. But, I don't understand the hype about him this year, and I couldn't emphasize the "this year" part enough. The future does look really bright for Ceci. But in 2013-2014, he's sort of been ... ordinary. Very ordinary. He's made his share of mistakes, he's made his share of good plays, he's done it all carrying around a Filip Kuba-esque anchor in Chris Phillips. For all of these reasons I like Cody Ceci. And yet, I really don't get the comments about him single-handedly "stabilizing the defense", as Bryan Murray argued earlier this year. Because that, uh, never happened.
So, round and round we go on the back-end, where it seems more likely that the team's going to remain in bed with Jared Cowen and ultimately trade Patrick Wiercioch in the off-season, barring some freak long-term injury that forces him back into the lineup.
And of course, I'd probably play all four of the above guys over Chris Phillips. But, being a veteran gets you a longer leash, I guess.
(2) As for the only Ottawa defenseman I'd actually call good -- well, not a lot of great news. Karlsson opened up in a big way to a Swedish publication, transcribed by a guy over at HF Boards.
Some of this stuff was either known or understood. He's going through quite a tough time in his personal life, lost a lot of friends in Daniel Alfredsson, Jakob Silfverberg, and Peter Regin to other teams, and still doesn't feel right with respect to his ankle injury. I thought Karlsson's looked really great since November or December, so it's interesting to hear that he still doesn't think he's at 100%. Perhaps an off-season of workouts -- as Karlsson referenced in that post -- will do him wonders. Overall, it just honestly sounds like the guy had a shitty year.
The one thing that struck me as a new development of sorts was Karlsson sort of implying that he was exhausted from the heavy minutes he's logged this year. I don't really think we're talking about a conditioning thing here, so it'll be curious to see if Ottawa scales his minutes down the stretch.
Either way, that's not very encouraging.
The season of hell continues forward.
Thanks for reading!