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Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Not that I agree Vegas had their way with us ( we were the better team 3/4 games and they needed to concuss Brodie to be better in the last one) but at do you propose to improve team speed?
I would say Backlund, Bennett, Gaudreau, Czarnik, Dube are our five fastest forwards.
The next group of guys don't seem slow either: Lindholm, Frolik, Ryan. All guys who belong on a fast team.
Which leaves "the rest":
Jankowski - He doesn't have the most explosive skating, but he has a certain quality to his skating that has manifested in some excellent rushes. Is he the problem?
Tkachuk - He's not physically fast but he's also so intelligent and crafty that he is able to dominate at both ends. Perhaps he slows down the power play entry though. Is he the problem?
Monahan - His speed seems to be a bit problematic defensively, but he's the best shooter on roster. Like Tkachuk his lack of speed manifests on the PP entries. Is he the problem?
Neal - Was actually ON Vegas last year. Or is it that he's redundant with Tkachuk?
Hathaway - Ideally he isn't in the lineup, though he has been the last three games...
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The only way to improve team speed is to improve the personnel or in other words, get players who are fast. All we hear from Bill Peters is that the team needs to play fast, but it was the Canadiens who skated circles around us and made the team look as bad as I’ve ever seen them play. I give Bergevin a lot of credit, he went away from the norm and built a team with a lot of smaller players, in fact I believe they are the shortest in the NHL, but they can all skate, play with pace, force turnovers and backcheck quickly. He’s now been rewarded with a team that’s only lost 1 regulation game despite supposedly rebuilding.
I think Treliving built a quicker team last year, but we’re still lacking those true burners. I don’t think anyone on this Flames team fits that bill based on what I’ve seen. Dube is probably the closest and possibly Johnny, but it’s his acceleration that’s his asset rather than his actual top speed. If the team was built with at least one burner per line that could cause havoc and turnovers with their strong forecheck, that would be a great start.