Over the past two years there has been a large contingent of people, both in the media and in the fan base, who have looked upon Pavel Buchnevich and his struggles with a smirk at best and outright glee at worst.
Buchnevich has been fancy stat darling over the course of his career, like Adam Clendening before him or Anthony DeAngelo right now. Which means, of course, there’s plenty of opposition from those who think the statistics have no place in the game, or just want to combat the blogs and podcasts who do see the value in players who don’t bring the “face punching” to face punching hockey player.