Josh Brown has struggled significantly this season, being assigned directly to the AHL after a brutal training camp and never recovering. Even in his 5 minutes, he burned the Oilers.
Oilers coach Knoblauch essentially says team does not need Josh Brown
Knoblauch probably wasn’t going to play Josh Brown much anyway, but on the LA Kings’ first goal of the game, Brown allowed Kuzmenko get into perfect position in the crease to score.
After that play less than 3 minutes into the game, Josh Brown was benched hard. For the remainder of the first period, he only played 1 minute of ice time.
In the rest of the game, Brown was only put out against the Kings’ fourth line. Coach Knoblauch clearly wasn’t happy with his game.
In his post game media, the Oilers coach was blunt in his assessment that he essentially doesn’t trust Brown with more minutes. The Oilers would rather play their veterans more – pushing them near 30 minutes – than give a break with Brown.
We saw it at the end of the regular season, we had many games where our defenceman, 4 of them, played over 25 minutes. Very similar tonight.
We’d like to have Mattias back with us. Obviously he’s not going to, so we’re going to need big performances out of those 4. Whether we work in the sixth defenceman more or not, I think we can have success either way.
– Coach Knoblauch
On the other hand, it’s clear that a player like Troy Stecher wouldn’t get an assignment of so little ice time. The Oilers don’t trust Josh Brown, and they have good reason. He’s struggled greatly in only 10 NHL games this year.
Hopefully the Oilers will get Stecher back soon to give the rest of the defence core some time on the bench. With a player like Brown on the roster, it’s clearly putting more stress onto the top defenceman.
