Rasmus Sandin's recent struggles with the Caps have gone from bad to worse
Throughout most of his tenure in Toronto, Rasmus Sandin was sheltered as much as humanly possible, playing mostly 3rd line minutes and was often viewed as the 7th defenseman when the team was at full health and during past playoff runs. However, when he landed in Washington following a trade in the week leading up to the March 3rd trade deadline, he was immediately thrust into a top pairing role. Needless to say, the results have been mixed.
Offensively, there's no question that Sandin had been more than living up to his billing as a bright young offensive defenseman. In 8 games with the Caps, Sandin has racked up 11 points, which is tremendous production. However, defensively, Sandin leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, after going -2 in today's loss to the Minnesota Wild, he's a collective -11 during his run in Washington.
Perhaps the worst stat of all for Sandin is that he's now been on the ice for 13 of 16 of the goals that the Capitals have allowed at even-strength over the last 4 games, per NHL dot com's Tom Gulitti. That's almost as bad as it gets. Now, I know that hockey is a team game. I know that one player out of five (six if you include the goaltender) isn't responsible for all of a team's shortcomings on defense. But it's starting to look like Sandin is the most common denominator here.
Kyle Dubas took a lot of heat for the Sandin trade at the time, but it's beginning to look more and more like he knew what he was doing, trying to recoup some valuable assets for a player who may not be nearly as complete a player as he once seemed.
