I was just as shocked as anyone to see that the Jamie McBain-Tim Gleason defense pairing was kept together in Thursday night's game against the Canucks because of how poorly those two played as a unit until then. While they had a respectable outing that game, I thought Kirk Muller would have decided to reunite Bryan Allen and Tim Gleason since they were going up against a strong offensive team and McBain has struggled in a shutdown role thus far. That's when I began to thought to myself the negatives of the Allen-Gleason defense pairing. Both guys are studs in their own zone and the best defensemen on the team in terms of preventing chances against but neither are that good of puck movers.
There is a lot of pressure put on defensemen to get the puck out of their own zone with break-out passes that you need to have a puck-moving defenseman on almost any pairing. One of McBain's strengths is being able to move the puck well and with Joni Pitkanen on the shelf indefinitely...
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