Justin Holl delivers stiff cross-check to teammate during game against the Pens

You can tell that Holl is really fighting it of late due to the fact that he's playing without a lot of confidence. Some games, he appears to be on auto-pilot and just going through the motions of what he thinks a defenseman should do, often looking completely lost. Last night, he even cross-checked a teammate who was helping out in the defensive zone.

I know that Holl is popular among his teammates in the locker room, so I sincerely doubt that this cross-check had anything to do with being frustrated with Malgin. This appears to be more of a situation where Holl is trying to do too much and may have even been at the end of a long shift, exhausted, as Jordie Benn had been on for a minute and 16 seconds at that point during the game. Perhaps he and Holl were stuck out there together for a lengthy one and he was just out of gas and trying to clear the front of the net by any means necessary.

Regardless of what the truth here is, Holl's play of late has not been good. He's been struggling mightily on both sides of the puck and the coaching staff and management has to see it.