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While Fredrik Claesson, Thomas Chabot and Ben Harpur are shuffled in and out of the lineup, Boucher has stuck with Oduya, who missed three October games to injury but has otherwise averaged 16:50 of ice time per night heading into this December meeting with Minnesota.

Against the Wild, the odd-man out was Harpur. Oduya, who had two goals, two assists and a minus-6 rating, played his 29th game of the season and 28th in a row.

While stats don’t tell the story with a defence-first player, Oduya was asked after the morning skate to evaluate his own game thus far. He paused thoughtfully before answering.

“I don’t know. For me, at this point in my career, I think I evaluate myself maybe sometimes to my disadvantage,” he said. “I think it’s been a lot of up and down games, but in general, I tend to find a way to look at it through the team. I want the team to obviously play good defensively,and I think as a defensive player that’s something you take more pride in.

“Sometimes it’s tougher if the results don’t go (the team’s) way, because you have nothing to show for what you’re doing. If you win games, you kind of get the credit anyway. If you do lose games maybe there’s something in your defensive game that’s not good enough.”

Pulling away from that viewpoint, Oduya admitted he hasn’t met his own expectations.

“I think as a player you feel when you’re playing better or not,” he said. “I think from my perspective it’s been very average for me. But I think there’s a lot I can improve on. Obviously the transition to a new team and the new system, a lot of things like that … obviously trying to play with certain D partners, getting more comfortable doing that. I think that there’s progress to it. I think I can play better, for sure.”