Quote:
Originally Posted by JayP
This article (by a former AHLer) is very relevant: http://blogs.thescore.com/nhl/2013/0...-of-sandpaper/
Man is it hard cheering for an organization stuck in the 80's. Playing McGrattan 3 minutes a night isn't going to change team toughness. It will, however, drag our mediocre fourth line down even further.
Imagine this - we could easily be fielding a 4th line of McGrattan-Begin-Aliu this weekend. There can't be a worse line in the NHL than that. |
Really disagree with the article as it relates to the current Flames. The Flames have a huge amount of scoring depth through the first three lines now. They need to be taking away ice time from the fourth line and givign it to the top two lines and to younger players who need the time to develop. Having a couple of tough guys on the fourth line is not going to hurt the Flames.
The Flames now have Iginla, Tanguay, Cammalleri, Stajan, Stempniak, Glencross, Hudler, and Cervenka as legitimate scoring threats. They need to find ice time for Horak, Baertschi, Backlund, etc... The traditional 1-2-3-4 line combo doesn't really apply here. They need to find time for potentially 3 scoring lines. The 4th line should be getting very minimal time. Should be something along the lines of 20+ minutes, 18+ minutes, and 15-17 minutes for the top three lines respectively, and 3-7 minutes for the 4th.