Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRed
Agreed. He started a forward line. Shouldn''t matter which one, and the 4th line has its purpose. Only question mark is why Westgarth started at the dot, not Jones; might be somethign there.
Bieksa obviously stepped in to protect the rookie on the faceoff, but that's way more questionable than Westgarth. And Vancouver had last change, so Tortorella could have defused the situation easily enough. Instead, he embraced it.
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Only thing I can think of is the height advantage Lain would have had over Jones. Westgarth used to take faceoffs once in a while in LA. I don't know about that one though.
I completely get Bieksa stepping in for Laine, but I don't think he thought of how that'd be interpreted. If you're Westgarth in that situation and you see a d-man take over in the faceoff dot, how does that get interpreted as anything but "I guess this guy wants to go"