I would still like to see the following:
Gaudreau - Monahan - X
Tkachuk - Lindholm - X
Bennett - Backlund - X
Lucic - Ryan - X
Mangiapane, Czarnik, Frolik, Jankowski, Dube, Rinaldo, Anyone else can rotate through those lines until chemistry is found.
Centres 'control' the game much more effectively than wingers. Make Lindholm a centre. Backlund is a fine 2nd line centre, but dropping him down makes him an absolute elite 3rd line centre with a 3rd line that you can deploy in any situation and not worry about getting matched against. It automatically makes this team a bit deeper.
If Ward wants to continue playing Lindholm as a winger, then let's try something like this:
Gaudreau - Monahan - Lindholm
Tkachuk - Backlund - X
Jankowski - Bennett - X
Lucic - Ryan - X
(Again, the 'Xs' are rotating through until something sticks with the remaining players). Give that third line 20 or 30 games and see how it can do. Bennett has good speed, he is good at faceoffs, and he has been good defensively for a long stretch. Give him the opportunity to 'relax' in that role for a while as he was supposed to, and finally settle the argument if he is a 'good centre or not'. I see him as a Brayden Schenn type - plays hard and is good at both ends.
In the first line-up, just roll those lines. You won't be worried about a bad match-up since lines 2-4 are all good defensively. You could literally roll 4 lines IMO.
In the 2nd, of course the third line will require a bit more sheltering at first to see how they respond. Play them as much as the 4th line, while keeping the top 2 lines with more minutes.
This whole team is in a bit of a funk, so pointing at Gaudreau and stating that he sucks now is not an argument that makes sense to me. Slotting him down into the third line on an actual game night is just going to further erode his confidence. There is not a single issue with Gaudreau's compete level. I always see him being one of the harder-working players out there game in and game out, with only a few exceptions. Kid is very competitive. I think it is totally a confidence issue at this point. Hopefully Ward is a better coach at encouraging confidence than Peters was.
This team needs to play up-tempo to succeed, and IMO, it starts first and foremost from the back-end. Gulutzan made this team play slow with is 5-man unit with practically zero chances at creating odd-man rushes. This team's rushing ability and corresponding higher scoring percentage plays seem to come off the rush. Starts with that defencemen making that strong first pass and/or joining the rush.
For all his warts, Bob Hartley was really good at getting the Flames to breakout quickly - this team was always 'dangerous' in that way, even if they weren't a very talented squad top to bottom. He was also really good at making forwards rotate and cover (you could hear him yelling on the bench at a player during a broadcast who didn't rotate back). I would like to see exactly that as a strategy, and now that there is a significant increase in talent, change the defence structure to actually be more puckhounds and challenge for the puck more rather than collapsing.
Brodie, Giordano, Hanifin, Andersson and Kylington can all make a really good first pass, while Stone and Hamonic are better at battling for lose pucks to cause turnovers.
Doesn't help much in whatever system is employed if you are continually sending pucks into skates and causing unnecessary puck battles and turnovers. That's a confidence thing right now that Ward is going to have to make some headway in. Every team that plays this way looks as slow as molasses on the ice.
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