Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Right, balancing sometimes means lowering the production of one line as a whole, while raising the production of another.
It’s not just because. You don’t need a player equal to Lindholm to create balance. That’s increasing the overall production by a lot, which would be ideal, but unfeasible. Seeing if balance can increase it a little bit, or spread out the scoring, is the obvious goal.
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It's also about a style/role balance.
A Bennett-Backlund-Czarnik/Neal line would not be able to shut anyone down. So instead you have to ask Tkachuk-Kadri to take on tough matchups. Yes, they can do it, but the goal was to get Tkachuk away from checking the MacKinnons and such so that he can score on the Josts and such.
A Tkachuk - Kadri - Neal line would be overwhelmingly slowfooted on the wings. Czarnik's skillset is perfectly complementary to Tkachuk and we saw that last year when they played together, but Czarnik couldn't handle the tough checking duties assigned to the Backlund line.
Gaudreau-Monahan-Ferland was statistically not much worse than Gaudreau-Monahan-Lindholm at five on five. The numbers bear this out:
GMF
53.15% CF
59.19% GF
GML
54.05% CF
59.39% GF
If that's the "dropoff" for making another line much stronger... it's common sense.