Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod
He's maybe fine for a 4th liner if
1) the Flames had an elite top line doing the lions share of the team's scoring, or,
2) the Flames are fine with being mediocre and/or chasing a high draft pick
Since the Flames are neither of these, they need a better 4th line than what they currently have. After all, they're a score-by-committee team now that Johnny and Chucky are gone.
Simply saying "4th liners basically don't score" is a very flawed argument. To fully assess a player's worth to a team, you have to look at everything the player does and doesn't do, and make a comprehensive assessment of what the player brings to the table. If the player contributes nothing offensively, he needs to be above average (I'd argue way above average) in terms of helping his team keep the puck out of the net.
Among forwards with at least 200 5v5 minutes, he's 219th place among 305 forwards in xGA/60. That's below average. Not nearly good enough. By comparison, Lewis is in 6th place in the entire NHL in that category. So you could make a good case that Lewis is suitable for the 4th line, but not really in the case of Lucic. As for Ritchie, he just barely misses the 200 minute threshold but if you overlook that, he's 144th in that category, about the league average. Which is fine if he's chipping in offensively. He did earlier this year, but only has 2 points in the past month.
Sitting Ritchie makes sense at this point, but Lucic and Rooney are not guys I would slot ahead of him.
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The cap world has created cheap fourth lines that generally don't score.
That's not a Flames issue.
Personally I wouldn't cut off the 5 on 5 minutes at 200. That eliminates the entire 4th line around the league and literally puts the top 9 forwards on every team against Lucic in a comparison.
I chose 100 minutes because it gave you 405 players or 12.65 per team.
And yes nothing bad happens when Lewis is on the ice for sure, but he earned most of that time playing with Backlund this year. Since he's moved down he seems to have fallen under Sutter's shortened bench strategy (which is a good one)