Re: UNH 2018-19: Souza The Opportunity
Yup, definitely best player on a bad team, which is what makes his defensive lapses so maddening.
Look, I get it. It was a bad play. But you're going to make mistakes when you're asked to push EVERY puck up ice and to the net. You're going to be on the ice for goals against when you're playing 30-35 minutes a night (every other shift, the PK, 2/3's of every PP)...
Max Gildon is not UNH's problem. UNH's problem is they can't score goals. They're not going to win many games until they can find a way to consistently score three goals a night. You can't win games scoring two goals per game. And, quite frankly, without Max Gildon this UNH team would struggle to score more than one...
He has not just figured in, but flat out created, half of UNH's goals this season. And that is because he is an elite talent at creating offense from the back end. A skill UNH has clearly told him to put into practice, because they desperately need it. They've certainly asked him to carry much of the offensive torch and he has done so admirably, while managing to be only a -1 (tied for second best on the team). All while his regular defensive partner is a -5...
Asking him to play forward instead is ridiculous. He's not a forward. He's never played forward. Moving him up front makes your best offensive player uncomfortable and worse - leading to less offense from him. You also have to replace him on the back end with a lesser player both in terms of blueline offense AND defense. He is a lesser defensive player than Wyse and Maass and that's it. Giving more minutes to Boyd and Dawson will lead to more goals against. Period. Remember watching the team from two years ago struggle to get any pucks out of their own end? Does anyone really want to go back to that? It's a horrible idea born out of frustration and nothing else...
Yes, Gildon still makes mistakes, which is what happens when your aggressive. But he makes far less than he did last year and he is improving consistently on defense, while carrying the offense as best he can. Gildon could have played more like Maass last night - and shot the puck that led to Nazarian's goal into the corner. UNH would have lost 2-1 in regulation instead. Would that make people happier? For all his so called 'defensive faults', last night's game winner was the only goal Gildon was on the ice for all weekend...
Its a lot like Poturalski getting much of the blame for only scoring nearly two points per game, but not 3 - and not keeping every puck out of the net at the same time. UNH's problem the last few years has not been their best players - its been the complete lack of depth and support for their best players. A good team would have a number of good players, allowing every one of them to do what they do best and not be depended on to do what they do best, then some and everything else too...
The question that should have been asked of Souza is why, after four years of your recruiting, do we not have a deeper roster...
