For the bottom six I would like to pickup Rousell if he becomes available. Having a speedy pest in the bottom six somewhere would be great.
WARNING LONG POST
I don't like it. I think we have enough of that player already. The bottom 6 needs a serious talent upgrade. I guess Rousell could be a 4th liner but he shouldn't be above that.
The bottom 6s of the 5 teams I consider true contenders right now. In no particular order. Some of these aren't the actual lines used but more of a show of depth.
Winnipeg
Perreault-Little-Roslovic
Coop-Lowry-Armia (That 4th line is probably better than our third line lmao and their top 6 is stacked ridiculous forward depth)
Nashville
Hartnell-Bonino-Hartman
Sissons-Fisher-Watson
Not as good as some of the others but still an upgrade on ours IMO.
Boston
Admittedly they don't really fit the outline their bottom 6 is f***ed up.
Haeinen-Ril. Nash-Schaller/Wingels (Better than ours Nash and Haenin are having great seasons.)
Kuraly-Gionta-Wingels/Schaller
They also have the best line in hockey so they can afford to downgrade a little in the bottom 6.
Pittsburgh
Rust-Brassard-Kessel (Third line or first line? I'm a fan of Bryan rust guys like him are part of the reason PIT went from a pretender to a contender in a few short years. Good cheap depth is imperative).
Jooris-Sheahan-Kuhnhakel or other random AHLer. Low end 3C centering the 4th line.
Tampa Bay
Another team stacked at the forward position.
Killorn-Johnson-Erne (Currently TJ is their 2RW but Palat isn't playing in the lineup I'm looking at so one of TJ/Palat/Gourde/JT Miller would play in the bottom 6.
Kunitz-Paquette-Callahan
These guys are paid too much but they're a good 4th line I think and on top of that they have an amazing blue line.
The point I'm trying to make is I think you need a few borderline top 6 guys in your bottom 6. The only guy we have that even remotely fits that description is Bennett (who still doesn't produce a lot) and Ferland/Frolik who both play in our top 6.
Fixing this should be a priority, I think a lot of those players for other teams tend to come from within but this is where the terrible drafting aside from the 4th round from the Sutter era to 2014 really hurts us. I think there is some hope in guys like Dube, Mangiapane, Phillips, Gawdin, Joly and Ruzicka but not all of those guys are going to be hits so we likely need to adress this via FA or trades.
Our top 6 also isn't as good as these contenders so it's definitely the position as a whole that needs to be addressed but I think a good deep team is better than a top heavy team. Crosby and Malkin play with one meh player each in order to get the most out of their forward group. We kind of do that with Ferland on the top line.