Quote:
Originally Posted by pepper24
Nah, 3rd line was where he fit and that was his line to take charge of. Remember he started the year at center behind Monahan and Backlund.
After he failed at center, Jankowski took over and on wing there was no room on the top 6. Ferland had 20 goals on top line and why break up the 3M line. Unfortunately Jagr didn't pan out and Versteeg got hurt. Hathaway is a big drop off.
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After Bennett “failed” at centre, he stepped up and gave Jankowski a significantly better winger than He himself got to play with as a centre.
Bennett and Jankowski were the only NHL quality players in our bottom 6 last year until Lazar finally started getting into the lineup regularly and improved his game to that of a 4th line player. Sadly, all 3 of them were saddled with talent-draining veterans who sank our team all year long.
The way Treliving structured the bottom 6 last year was beyond horrific. He not only filled it with awful veterans, but he stifled his youth’s development by making them play with those veterans.
Gulutzan did Bennett, Jankowski and Lazar no favours in sticking them with those veterans - but he undoubtedly knew he couldn’t play any of those veterans up the line-up as they’d break what was (mostly) working with the top two lines.
Asking young developing players like Bennett and Jankowski to be able to drag scrubs like Hathaway, Brouwer, Versteeg, Stajan, Stewart, Glass, and Freddie Hamilton up and down the ice and expecting them to produce is ridiculous. Talk about setting people up for failure.