Quote:
Originally Posted by Kovaz
Oh definitely. They're facing tougher competition with worse zone starts and that definitely is impacting their production.
My point was more that they've pretty much been a shutdown line this year, rather than the dominant two-way line they were last year. On a team that's struggling to score goals, they are also struggling to score goals. Last year it was totally out of the question to shuffle them up because 3M was carrying our offense, so the bottom 6 was just a matter of cobbling together whatever we could manage with the slim pickings that were there. This year, some line juggling becomes a much more attractive option - there's a lot less risk of it hurting our overall offense when 3M isn't scoring anyway.
Maybe we could bump Frolik down to the Bennett-Jankowski line to help them generate some zone time. Maybe we move Tkachuk to that line, and double down on (Lazar? Hathaway?)-Backlund-Frolik as a shutdown line. Maybe we bump Bennett up and see if Bennett-Backlund-Tkachuk can generate some offense.
But I think at some point you have to try something new, despite Gulutzan's insistence on changing nothing and letting them work through it. We shuffle our lines less than any other team in the league*, and I think a gentle nudge in the direction of the line blender could help us find some different chemistry.
* Some support for that claim: Gaudreau-Monahan-Ferland is the line that has played the most time together in the league, and were it not for Frolik's injury the 3M line's pace would have them in first instead (they're still 4th despite missing 10 games). Only 10 line combos league wide have >400 minutes together. Had Frolik not been injured, we'd have two lines with >500 minutes. And it's not due to a top-heavy ice time distribution either: Gaudreau is our only forward in the top 30 league-wide TOI (20th), and Backlund is next at 50th.
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Agreed, I was about to post something similar.
Here's my suggestion on how to internally 'fix' the issue:
Gaudreau-Monahan-Ferland
Tkachuck-Backlund-Brouwer/Lazar(when healthy)
Bennett-Jankowski-Frolik
Hathaway/Versteeg-Stajan-Lazar/Lomberg