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He didn't bench Henrik, the situations are incomparable because The Starter-backup goaltender situation was intended to be one in which Biron got a large number of starts this year.
We have Newbury, an AHLer as a pivot right now. Our 3rd line is made of seemingly randomly assorted parts.
Anisimov has and is one of the top offensive players on this team, and we are a team that does not get goals easily.
Benching Anisimov is not the right move. For him or for the team. You're going to tell a 22 year old who is in no way a liability to the team, but is a starting PK guy, that his improvement has not been good enough to play? Absurd. The reason he doesn't look quick on the Callahan line is because it is his job to be the 3rd man high 99% of the time. It is not his job to go into the corners and hit, and grind. Its his job to get to the net and protect against the counterattack.
Here is a fun stat for the "turnover machine"
He has 7 giveaways all season. For comparison
Prust has 24
Gaborik has 18
Stepan has 16
Anisimov has the 3rd lowest giveways of our starting forwards, the other 2 have missed time (Callahan, Fedotenko)
Anisimov is also first on our team forwards in takeaways with 34
34 takeaways, 7 giveaways. 13 goals and 31 points in 64 games as a 22 year old. This is a player we should be benching.
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