Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
That's weird. Didn't seem to hurt the Ducks last night when Carlyle rolled his lines as usual.
Balanced teams don't just stick McDavid or Kane out there for 30 minutes, especially teams without a McDavid. Rolling lines can (and often is) JUST as successful a strategy as shortening the bench, so let's not pretend every team needs to be like Chicago or Edmonton to have success when they're not close to being the only example.
- Bouma and Stajan clocked in at 8-9 minutes, so did Shaw and Wagner.
- Holzer and Montour were the two lowest Anaheim D at 13 and 20, Bart and Engelland played 14 and 15
- Monahan and Getzlaf each played 20
- Gio, Brodie, Hamilton all played 22-24, so did Bieksa, Lindholm, and Theo
The "isn't playing his best players enough" is just another in a long line of false narratives constructed by people who don't like Gulutzan. He's employing a strategy successfully used by many different coaches in the NHL, one which the Pacific Div Champions and team currently holding a 3-0 series lead (including a late comeback win) uses.
Anaheim has their top 2 D out and their bottom pairing are still playing more than Bart and Eng.
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Right.
But Montour & Holzer =/= Engelland & Bartkowski.
And further, it doesn't matter at all how the Ducks deploy their roster. It matters how the Flames deploy theirs, because those are the horses you have in the race.
The evidence is pretty damning that the bottom half of our roster, and their over use, is a key contributing factor to why we are down three games to zero.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be playing our bottom pairing and our fourth line. They need to be played. But they need to be played in such a way that they don't get repeatedly victimized.
Literally go back and look at each goal the ducks have scored this series.
I am not constructing a false narrative.
I've constructed why we are losing, and backed it up with video evidence.
Elliott can't make a save. Reason #1.
Our third pairing and fourth line is reason #2.