Fair enough. I think the most accurate way to put it: while he is not the problem, he isn't being much of a solution, either. One can wonder though, how much one player can do... It's almost like when a ship is caught in a 185 miles-per-hour sea storm, how much can one expect the captain to save the vessel from a sea wreckage? The way this team was built is an absolute nightmare. They have no pieces. We were counting on Konecny. He is a non-factor, and that's putting it nicely. Atkinson has also disappointed. Maybe some people didn't expect much from him, but I did. The guy is capable of scoring. Only 3 years ago, he scored 69 points and 41 goals in Columbus. In 2016, he scored 62 points.
And while we are at it, let's not leave our $26M man Couturier out of it. I was at the Carolina game last Friday and specifically focused on him. The guy looks lost. Plain lost. I don't know what his problem is. If it was playoffs, I would think he is playing injured and they are just not telling us. But physically, he looked perfectly fine to me. But he looks unmotivated and just like he doesn't know what to do out there. He looks a shadow of what he was in the last 2 years. I would say he *almost* plays the way he was playing in his rookie year. It's plain scary to watch him pay these days.
I mean if Giroux ends up getting traded, it will probably not be because of his poor play. It will be a beginning of rebuilding process. I get it. But I am pissed how incompetent and ineffective Fletcher is. I was mad at Hextall, but at least I could see what he was doing. There was a structure in his work. One can say it had flaws, but it least I could follow what he was doing. What this current moron is doing - I have no clue. And the worst part yet - it doesn't look like he does, either.