Chris18 wrote:
Av-merican wrote:
Honestly, MacDonald had me fooled. I thought he was playing fairly well whenever I saw the Isles play and he was alongside Hamonic. He passed the "eye test," and it's obvious I wasn't the only one fooled. It wasn't until I saw some of his fancy stats that I realized he was a rickety barn door on skates.
I swear he was way better when he first came up than in recent years. He was a pretty good shutdown D-man for a few years. I started noticing 2 years ago that he was often literally laying on the ice when the other team scored. It was like he was trying to show how hard he was working, but in reality it showed he was getting worse. Shame. I liked the guy early on.
I think this is fair. That said, he started to look worse when the Isles D started to actually get to NHL quality.
He probably was better at first, and I think the fancystats support this idea. I don't think stats guys started to get on him until the '13 season.
Here is a list of his most common partners, 2010-13:
Hamonic: 77.1%
Jurcina: 5.3%
Streit: 4.0%
Ness: 2.3%
Gervais: 1.7%
Others include (41 minutes or less together): Martinek, Staois, Reese, Wisniewski, Visnovsky, Hillen, Eaton, Hickey, Finley, Carkner, Mottau, Strait, Wishart, Katic, Donovan.
There's some bright spots in there (his time with Streit was quite productive for both of them) but the easier conclusion is that Hamonic was quite strong and Mac got to tag along for the ride. Maybe if Milan Jurcina had broken into the NHL with a partner like Hamonic he'd have eventually cashed in with a $4-$5m multi-year deal with Philly.
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Injustice? Cobain died and Eddy Fucking Vedder lived to haunt us with his shitty fucking voice, trite lyrics and his Eddy Vedderness.
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