There's a problem, a real problem with putting together real data, real information,

that paints what would appear to be a real picture of Chris LaTang's decline. And that's that he always makes you

look bad for doing that. Good morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh

Sports. This is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball,

I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this.

If you put together right now the defensive depth chart for the Penguins,

even if you blur left and right together, it's plausible,

if not outright, likely that LaTang would be your number one. If it isn't LaTang, that means

Eric Carlson wasn't traded and you would see Carlson as your number one. If Carlson were to perform as passionately as he tends

to do when it involves the Swedish national team. But the case becomes legitimately complicated

no matter how strongly you feel about Letang, no matter how passionately he's performed over a career that, in my eyes,

for a long time now, has had him ranked as the number one defenseman in franchise history.

Not just this depth chart.

I can get into his basic stats this past season, 74 games,

nine goals and 21 assists,

and most disconcerting out of those figures,

he had only 14 points over the final 40 games,

and the Penguins were actually a lot better team in that stretch.

I could throw all kinds of advanced analytics into this same stew and it wouldn't come up any better. Probably the point that

would be most powerful would be that his Corsi 4 percentage. That's it. Five on five, the percentage

of shot attempts generated by either team out of the 11 defensemen that the Penguins dressed

for at least three games, La Tang's 49.1 percentage ranked ninth.

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