Re: Bear vs. Barrie.

Last year Bear was manna from heaven as Nurse finally got a RD who meshed with him and they got good results.

That has continued this year. Here's both Bear and Barrie's results this season with Nurse this year using http://puckiq.com  : (1/

Barrie's results pretty well dove-tail with my opinion on him when EDM signed him. This screen shot is from a conversation with a smart TOR fan (not Dom) about Barrie in December: (2/

These are Barrie's results from 17/18-today. Good NHL Dman 5v5. Struggles a bit. vs Elites compared to his team mates. Generally kept in high 3rd/low 2nd pair QoC via TOI% vs Elites (just under 30%) Same thing we see today. (3/

Barrie's worth is tied to the PP and getting 3rd/2nd pair minutes.

That position is taken in EDM for the foreseeable future by Bouchard.

You can't have both players long term unless Bouchard can play top 4 well (vs other team's top 6F) and we don't know when he will be able (4/

to do that on a regular basis. Both players are best slotted 3RD, 1PP. You can have both for a year, but not long term.

Bear is much better vs the other team's top 6, is much cheaper than Barrie and none of his value comes on the PP.

Bear is a much, much better roster match(5/

for an EDM team that has Bouchard than Barrie is and its as plain as day.

EDM *must* keep Bear over Barrie next year. To move him and re-sign Barrie makes the top 4 worse 5v5 and more expensive. (6/

EDM can keep Larsson or go hunting for another RHD to play top 6 (EDM has a lot of cap space next year, a Hamilton-Bear-Bouchard RHD corps would be exceptional), but what they cannot do is move Bear and keep Barrie.

If they do, they'll be a worse team because of it. (7/7)