Edited Feb. 22, 2020 at 3:10 p.m.
Quoting: aedoran
Yes his +/- is bad to the point where it has become laughable. If you start at the 2015-16 season (AA 1st season) and and sum they seasons AA tied for 6th worst with Simmonds. The players that are worse in descending order are Barrie, Hutton, Ekman-Larsson, Severson and Ristolainen. There are some pretty good defensemen there which is probably why no one puts a lot of stock in +/-. The Wings have 12 players in the bottom 24 players in the +/- category players who are very good defensive players so it points to a much bigger issue. Howard has contributed to that by being pulled 5 times so far and hasn't won a game since 10/29/2019 and Bernier hasn't been playing this well all season. Now I'd like to point something out you either want AA or you don't want him. Trading for him and then arguing how bad he is doesn't really work because if he is so bad why do you want him?
Dmen should have the worst +/-, since they play a lot more than forwards. Barrie and Severson are known more for their offense than their defense and play big minutes, I bet they both have been dinged for many SH goals against, while Severson has been on too many awful teams. Ristolainen is big and scores, but he plays too high on the depth chart (he is a good 3rd pair Dman) and has played on many terrible teams. Hutton is surprising, but he might not really be an NHL calibre Dman. OEL is great, but he plays monster minutes vs the best players in the world and he has never been on a good team. Simmonds is surprising, but likely he is a good PP point producer, but struggles at 5v5 vs the better NHL players and of course he is not a great skater, so he might struggle on the back check.
AA probably isn't directly involved in a lot of the goals against, but he is a well-known cherry-picker who probably is out of position often in the defensive zone structure, is probably often very late to get back into his dzone to help anyone and of course weak goaltending is factor.
In looking at it more closely AA has worn the Wings green jacket in 2 of the last 3 years, but early in his career he was nowhere near the worst on the team, but he was likely facing the weakest competition as well, whereas now he goes up against the best.
His poor season and horrific +/- is an indication that he has not been a very good NHL player this season and so his value should not be the same as it was last year when he scored 30 goals. So why is he worth even a 2nd rounder? Doesn't make sense.
McDavid is an elite turd polisher and no one would argue that Patrick Maroon, Zach Kassian, Joakim Nygard or Ty Rattie are better scorers or more skilled than AA. James Neal IS a better scorer, but the Real Deal has no Wheels, so many of his goals this year are from standing around the net and on the PP..