Quote:
Originally Posted by djsFlames
Its more about bringing balance to the team.
Your defense is a 10/10 but your forward group is still a 7/10, if that. Toffoli and Coleman/Dube as your top 6 RWers is fine but not ideal.
When you're looking at dealing with St Louis, Edmonton, Vegas, Colorado who have high octane offense, you want to be able to put up enough goals of your own. Which means having as many bona-fide top 6 guys as those teams can put out. Playing prevent hockey might not be enough, as we witnessed.
Weegar has a slight edge on Hanifin, so you still make an improvement on the back end, but trading D for F to give you a 9/10 defense and 8/10 offense I think helps you chances against the aforementioned teams.
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It's not though, it's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Here is the current lineup:
Hanifin - Andersson
Kylington - Tanev
Zadorov - Weegar
Valimaki - Meloche
Mackey
You have 3 solid pairs which, as you say, is a 10 - even with an injury or 2 (IMPOSSIBLE to avoid in the playoffs), it is still solid
but take Hanifin out, and you have this:
Weegar - Anderson
Kylington - Tanev
Zadorov - Meloche
Valimaki
Mackey
now you have 2 solid pairs with a weak 3rd pair. Get an injury or 2 in the playoffs, and you have the exact same situation as we had against the Oilers.
Without Hanifin, the D is about a 7 or 8. But one key injury in the top 4, and it's a major probllem.
We need to add another forward, no question. But weakening our D to do it is the wrong way to go. Trade Valimaki, or even Kylington if you have to, but we should keep the top 4 of Hanifin, Andersson, Weegar and Tanev, because they a WHY we have an awesome D.