Dear Rick,
Sort of.
I have written about what should happen with the left elbow in the follow through in my tip, "It's the Lead Elbow, Stupid!,"
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/elbow.html. The gist is that the elbow naturally will stay close to the hip and follow the hip around back, unless you do something artificial to keep the elbow headed down the parallel line. In other words, a natural stroke is a pull stroke.
I and others say the lead elbow should continue artificially down the toe line through impact, and this causes a separation from the hip and left side of the body. It is more about the straightness of the delivery of the putterface through impact than it is about preventing left-wrist breakdown.
How to do this is another difference. If you use a pendulum stroke while keeping the "triangle" of arms, wrists, and hands intact, or "dead," the only part of the body available to send the lead elbow down the toe line is the lead shoulder. Rocking the lead shoulder up in the follow-through combined with keeping the triangle intact pulls the elbow out from the hip, preferably down the toe line.
A problem is that the shoulder rock tends to stall out shortly after impact, unless the golfer consciously keeps the lead shoulder headed up in the rock. The muscles that are responsible for the shoulderframe rocking as a unit are those in the abdomen and lower back, where sheets of muscles wrap in a spiral pattern down onto the pelvis, and reciprocal pulling of these muscles turns the upper torso. A shoulderframe rock is essentially a bent-over torso turn, powered by these muscles.
So, in my approach to the shoulder stroke, not only are the hands "dead," but the wrists, arms, AND shoulder muscles are all dead as well. I teach keeping the armpits relaxed and unchanging (although not clenched shut). What sends the elbow away dowen the toe line, then, is the gut, not the left arm or the scapular/pectoral muscles opening the lead armpit.
It seems that deliberately sending the lead elbow up and away from the left side is similar to what I describe, because both tend to "lag" the hands behind the left wrist and left arm. The "lagging" is more pronounced when the left arm controls the move. In the shoulder stroke I teach, the lead shoulder's moving up of course is similar to a lagging of the hands, but it is effectively stiffled out by the constant muscle tone that keeps the triangle intact and unchanging in shape during the stroke.
The hands are "dead" because they are "hanged" below the shoulders, and when the shoulder moves up, the hands necessarily are dragged along behind (as is the elbow). But in my approach, since the corpse cannot get dragged ahead of the horse of the shoulder, left-wrist breakdown is simply a non-issue. Likewise, there is no need to concern yourself with a "release" of the wrists through impact. The wrists stay relaxed and unworried about collapse, just keeping the same tonic steadiness they start with.
The only reason the wrists ever break down to begin with is handsiness in powering the stroke. Dead hands aren't a power source.
So, sort of.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.