hehe but realistically, no matter if you view Petan as good or bad, he plays very few minutes and so any change there is quite marginal.
Hendricks, due to his heavyily porous penalty killing, is the much larger source of marginal gain.
Best case scenario is we see a scoring line centre join, since we have 3 lines worth of scoring line quality wingers (Connor, Roslovic, Ehlers, Laine, Perreault, and Wheeler) and only 2 lines worth of scoring line quality centres (Scheifele and Little).
Lowry is quite capable of being the pivot for one of those lines, but to optimize would place him on a shutdown line with two of Copp, Armia, Tanev, and Dano, and then have someone else on the scoring line.
That is where Lowry's return would have the largest marginal impact on the team.
It's taken awhile, but I absolutely agree with you.
Would this be Roslovic moving to Centre? I'm not sure if he's "driving" enough to make that happen.
I suppose Armia would be able to play with skilled players in a scoring role.
Shut down line of Copp, Lowry, Tanev.
I would hate to them bring in a rental player. Something about a guy playing in a non-playoff team, getting traded and taking a roster spot from a guy on playoff team seems wrong.