Quote:
Originally Posted by dino7c
The way Lucic and Ritchie have played this season are the last of the Flames problems...both guys are better than expected
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You know you can be a fan of the team and still criticize them every once in while right? You don’t have to defend every single decision the team makes.
You’re right they aren’t the problem, their usage is the problem.
Lucic and Lewis have both played way too many minutes this year, both are 4th liners being asked to play top 9 minutes at times. In no world should Lucic, Lewis, Ritchie ever play more minutes 5v5 than Backlund and Coleman in a game.
When those guys are playing limited minutes on the 4th line they are an advantage, when you ask them to play up the lineup they are production killers. Lucic hasn’t scored in 68 games!
Sutter is falling in love with “His Guys” and it’s hurting the team.
This team has needed at least one top 9 forward for 2 seasons now. They went and got Toffoli and Jarnkrok last year. But with Gaudreau, Tkachuk, and Jarnkrok gone they still lack another.
Matthew Phillips has 131 points in his last 140 AHL games. That leads all players under 25 in that time, and is 8th among guys that played at least 50 games in PPG. He’s received 1 NHL game for his efforts, and isn’t even given games with the NHLers in training camp as a reward.
No wonder the AHLers seem deflated, they realize Sutter is too stubborn to ever give any of them a look.