Quote:
Originally Posted by slcrocket
Respectfully disagree. I think this is a team with a good first line, a good second line, and two lines of fourth liners.
I keep waiting for Bennett/Jankowski/Czarnik to prove some form of reliability, and I am consistently disappointed. Lucic, Rieder, and Ryan look decidedly like fourth liners at best (I would argue that Lucic is a net loss individually and there wasn't exactly a long line to sign Rieder, either). The dropoff from Tkachuk/Backlund/Frolik to what we have left under them is significant.
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Derek Ryan is at worst a third-line centre. He has not had a great start this year, but I am entirely convinced that he will be perfectly fine. I think the same can be said for both Mangiapane and Frolik, and probably also Bennett.
So, no. The Flames do not have two fourth lines. What I see is a team that from top-to-bottom is among the deepest in the entire NHL. The fact of the matter is that in a hard-capped League even the best teams have holes in their lineup: some of them bigger or more significant than others, and I think the Flames have done very well to manage and balance their lineup under these constraints.