I think another move is coming. He knows we still need a young fast forward for the bottom 6

Archibald shouldn’t sniff the starting lineup

every metro team is looking forward to playing that defense.

Yet Ronny built this offseason around improving it lol. That should tell you how bad our offseason was

The defense is fine. Its the forward group that has the issue

dumo-letang first pair. petry is second pair

Our left side is pretty shaky.

Yeah but the right side is better. Its a wash to me, maybe even slightly better.

Petry is better than Marino. Matheson is better than POJ/Smith. I like Ruhwedel but Rutta is probably better.

Rutta mostly played on the left. He’s not an awful signing but that money could have went toward a second line winger. Petry is better offensively but Marino was incredibly solid on defense. Petry is no stellar shut down dman. He’s always played with a classic stay at home type of defenseman like Edmunson or Emelin. Pettersson is going to likely be who he plays with and I’m not exactly feeling great about that but Dumo would be even worse

Even if you consider Rutta a left defenseman - the point is still the same. I don't think that changes anything really. The defense is a wash for the most part. Which is fine considering they were 5th in GAA last year. We didn't need an improvement.

The signing of Rutta in a vacuum is fine - but after they traded for Petry I give it a D. It makes no sense to me. It's wasted cap space that should have gone to bettering the forward group like you said. Ruhwedel or POJ/Smith would have been perfectly fine. I never said Petry is a shut down defenseman - he's offensively minded - but he's better than Marino overall without a doubt. Pettersson graded out incredibly well at defense last year - so you should at least feel okay about that pairing.