Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM
I think Treliving tried to build stronger lines. I think that was the whole Hamilton/Ferland for Lindholm/Hanifin trade. I think he intended to have Lindholm centering a strong line and Monahan doing the same, with combinations of Gaudreau and Tkachuk. The problem was, he brought in a RW for one of those lines that turned out to be terrible. That failure leads to a Lindholm at RW spell which turned out to be maybe too successful off the hop. Imagine if Neal scores 25 per year on Lindholm or Monahan’s RW. And now you have Mangiapane as RW on the other line. Then you have Backlund, Dube and Bennett. Then you have Ryan with whoever you can fit in - a Nordstrom or a Ritchie type. That team looks a lot better.
I love Lucic, but the Neal deal killed the build.
The alternative universe is Bennett working out, which means you still have Hamilton and no Lindholm or Hanifin, but the rest looks pretty similar. Except Bennett is one of the top 6 Cs, not Lindholm.
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Good point about Neal! Unfortunate we couldn't sign Neal to a show me deal at the time as that might have saved a lot of pain. At the time I was hoping we would find room for a young guy to step up and many of us were on board with the idea of Neal bolstering the top 6. Both Neal and Brouwer are big misses that still affect this team.