Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Bedard cannot fill Cirelli's role on the roster: 12 minutes a game with mostly d-zone starts against other team's top lines, and killing penalties.
Like it or not, the Canadian (and American) Olympic teams are built around roles.
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I do not like it. I never have. I think this is stupid. They have plenty of guys on the roster who can kill penalties and the opportunity cost in terms of Bennett killing penalties as opposed to someone else is ridiculously minimal. As for "playing against the other team's top lines", that is what your best players are for, especially when your best players are literally
the best players.
It's not even an argument about "you should take the best guys you have available", although that would be a good argument. It's about taking every player who can singlehandedly, regardless of who else is on the ice, create a goal for your team in circumstances where there's just
nothing the opposition can do about it. There are a half dozen of those guys on the planet.
I reiterate: this is
stupid. I know it's what they do and what they've always done. That doesn't make it not stupid. When the team is down 4-2 mid-way through the third and we're all forced to sit there thinking "OK, once this fourth line shift is over, hopefully MacKinnon or McDavid's line can get back out there and maybe generate something", maybe this will finally be clear to people.