We could have protected 4 dmen but then we could only protect 4 forwards. It sounds like thats what DC was thinking we should have done. I dont disagree. I think new would have lost Eller, Johansson or Burakovsky. I could have lived with that. We lost Johansson anyway.
Oh ArJunaz, I know you dont care for Carlson but he is head and shoulders our best dman. Protecting Schmidt over Carlson is preposterous. You can't even say for Cap reasons because 3 Caps dmen make more than he does. I know you dont care for the guy but let's try to be realistic.
I love how you keep trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I am not a Carlson hater. Carlson is a good defenseman. I just rag on him when his brain goes blank, which is too often for my liking. He's also improved a fair amount this past season.
The fact is that I really liked Nate Schmidt, both as a nice guy and I also saw him as a future superstar d-man. You weren't around back then, but others here know that I was the first to sing his praises and predicting that he would be a star. Schmidty was also a lower cap hit than Carlson, which was paramount after last season. Schmidt also always gave 100%, something that could not be said for Carlson. This year it's understandable that Carlson is not 100% balls to the wall since he's playing so many minutes, but he was a slacker in past years, and those Quaalude moments always bug the hell out of me.
I really did not like the way the NHL set the rules for the draft. The 7-3-1 option to fill just one expansion team was ridiculous. In the previous draft, which was to fill two teams the teams got to protect 9-4-1 as an option. This makes more sense. There were other rules in place to prevent teams from leaving only recent call ups exposed.
All that said, I'm saying this from my bedroom having never played a single shift of hockey myself. I know these guys must work incredibly hard and here I am nitpicking because that what fans do. I am not a Carlson hater. I actually have greater respect for him now then I did in previous seasons. I still really like Nate though. The only players I really do not like are the ones that are mean and nasty and that try to hurt other players by playing dirty or players that embellish all the time; people like Subban
, Crosby
, Clutterbuck
, Marchand
, Shaw
, Kessler
, Simmonds
to name a few. Carlson is a nice guy and for that alone I couldn't hate on him.
I know you need to have someone to beat heads with about Carlson, but let that not be me.