Quote:
Originally Posted by FlameZilla
My dream lineup from this development camp would be:
Baertschi Monahan Gaudreau
Klimchuck Jankowski Poirier
Agostino Knight Horak
Ferland Reinhart Arnold/Hanowski
Wotherspoon Sieloff
Kanzig Roy
Kulak Ramage
Berra
Gillies
We should scrap the main camp & just roll with this lineup next year!!
There's still a shocking lack of depth in Right-shooting players, but at least we have Knight...
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I do not see Bartschi and Gaudreau on the same line. Too small. I think you need to maintain some balance in the lineup and you need guys that have specific skills to compliment each other. While Gaudreau and Bartschi are extremely skilled, who is going to go in and win the board battles for the puck on the dump in? One of your wingers needs to have some size and willingness to get his nose dirty. I think Poirier's speed and grit, and Agostini's all around game, make them perfect players to compliment the two small left wingers. Both of those guys play a strong game along the boards and have the tenaciousness to retrieve the dump ins.
One observation, while looking at the developing team on paper, is that the Flames top LW prospects are all pretty small. I think this means the team will move to a strategy of exiting their zone on the rights side to free up the small players from the boards and opening up the middle of the ice for them. This means they need guys on the right side with some size and speed, and again, Poirier and Agostino seem to fit that bill. I think this will still be an area where the team tries to find some strong RWers in the up coming drafts to suppliment that philosophy. I doubt the Flames will expend the early picks on RWers though as they need to plug a couple holes on the blueline, and those holes are in the top four.
On the blueline I would love to see Sieloff and Ramage paired together. Talk about the tunnel of death. Both guys love to catch guys with their heads down and deliver the big hit. I see these guys as a throw back Macoun-Nattress pairing. Brodie (Suter) now just needs his Macinnis and we're looking good on the blueline too.
You know, as I look at this team in development I see almost a mirror image of the '89 Flames developing. They had some small RWers (Loob and Mullen) who were complimented by LWers who could get into the zone, crash the boards and retrieve the puck. We're just looking at the team through the mirror. I really like how this is developing. Exciting stuff lay ahead!