Marc Staal, the only compliment I have for him is that he's probably not as bad of a human as he is a defenseman. And that's not saying a whole lot.
Today's category is worst defenseman. I'd try to avoid using duplicates as much as possible so if you can resist voting Marc Staal then please do, If not I understand.
by Andr3wJ411
22 Comments
Mike Matheson
I have never created the puck touching someone’s stick quite like I did with Mike. It’s like he was trying to give it away in our zone on purpose, never met a turnover he didn’t yearn to cough up.
It’s wild he won some tournament best Defenseman, came in with wild hype, signed a big ticket and sucked so hard right after. The whole slamming Elias Pettersson into the crust of the earth thing must have taken a toll on him, and he did bring us Horny so I can’t be too hard on him.
Josh brown was pretty bad too
Yandle.
Jason Demers
I’d nominate Anton Strahlman. In his prime, he was solid for Tampa. But he was way past his prime with us when his injuries had caught up to him and he could no longer keep up with the pace of play. It was incredibly telling when he was out there.
I know other contenders such as Yandle and Matheson are tempting, but Yandle at the very least had a couple of seasons where he put up numbers for us offensively and ran the powerplay well and Matheson at least offensive upside as well. Strahlman was a complete liability on his on end and was a complete non factor offensively.
Filip Kuba made you question the threshold for being a professional.
Too much recency bias here. I nominate Alex Petrovic – not only was he bad, he’s the reason we lost Marchessault and Reilly Smith to the Vegas expansion draft because we decided to keep him as the 4th defenseman.
https://preview.redd.it/hycdr5mlflnd1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8575352302596cdc2249b8b3128366e401c0b622
You leave my boy alone
There are so many…
Petrovic, Gudbranson, Kindl, McIlrath all come to mind for recent players.
Riley Stillman
Matheson
Dan Boyle
Matheson
Keaton Ellerby.
125 games played for the Panthers.
17 points.
-21 +/-.
Averaged just over 1 hit and 1 blocked shot per game for a DEFENSIVE defenseman.
Seems to be a nice guy in general and is starting his coaching career.
Weegar single handedly cost us multiple playoff series
Dallas Eakins the guy had 9 points in 120 games over a 10 year career. He was barely considered good enough to play on the expansion Panthers.
Kuba
Matheson
Josh Mahura wasn’t solely responsible for losing to Vegas but he was a reason. I still have nightmares of him being too small to play infront of Bob against their big forwards and essentially screening him.
Filip Kuba is definitely the worst defense man I’ve seen. I’m pretty sure we bought him out.
Matheson. He was a turnover machine. Couldn’t defend for shit either. Terrible positioning.
Ben Chiarot in brief stay. Not sure why but he was an awful fit.