Fucale was supposed to be a good one. I guess Vegas is taking him on as a long term gamble.
We seem to be taking gambles on like 8 different goalies hoping one of them can be a Fleury replacement down the line.
Habs fan popping in. Didn't notice until now that you guys signed Carr and Fucale. Tought I'd give some insight into the two of them.
Carr is a great gritty forward with a hell of a shot, wouldn't be surprised if he puts up 20 goals in a full season.
Fucale can be good but he's very inconsistent. He does show up for big games though so that's a plus.
Stastny is our 2C, Tatar will get a good shot at a top six role and Tuch seems ready for that role. At this point, I think possibly Nosek, Hyka, Carr and Pirri are duking it out for our third line winger spots.
Maybe try to move Eakin before the season and put Haula at center on the third line and try to turn it into more of a scoring line.
With a creative center like Haula and third line matchups, all four have got talent if any two of them can put it together consistently to get 35-40 points for us.
Smith-Karlsson-Marchessault
Tuch-Stastny-Tatar
2 of Nosek/Hyka/Carr/Pirri, Haula centering
Whoever-Bellemare-Reaves
Carrier,Carpenter
I think you guys will be really happy with Carr's work ethic and production. He most played 4th line LW in Montreal but still put up 10 points in his first 10 games. I know players get compared to Gallagher a lot but Carr is a player who I think really resembles Gallagher. Gives 100% every game, has a blistering shot, and can make a nice pass if need be. He would have probably been a 20-30 point player in an 82 game season for Montreal (a la Dale Weise in his prime), on Vegas I could definitely see him getting 35-40 if you guys have another great season.
We seem to be taking gambles on like 8 different goalies hoping one of them can be a Fleury replacement down the line.
Smith-Karlsson-Marchessault
Carr/Tuch-Stastny-Tatar
Haula-Eakin-Carpenter
Carrier-Bellemare-Nosek
This is the best line combination I come up with. The bolded ones are players that suffer when played on the same line, they haven't worked very well on the same line imo and caused defensive side problems.
If these would be the lines, 3rd line would be played as much as the second. The reason being that Turk has a weak spot for late draft players like Haula and Carpenter. He gave both a lot of minutes even though their lines had problems. Neal in the end had less ice time than Haula and Perron was moved to 3rd line. In critical moments of 3rd period, Turk gave Haula ice time when trailing and played Carpenter and Eakin relatively high minutes when we had a close lead. Playing Haula in a defensive role in the 3rd line with no PP time would be stupid and end up to him getting traded away.
To make things more complicated, there is a chance that we might get even another very skilled top-6 forward in Zucker or Panarin... either would be a great pickup, but would cause the 2nd and 3rd line to be even more of a puzzle.
Haula is most likely getting traded after this season anyway as it will be unlikely we can afford to give him the 5 million or more he'd want if we have other guys getting raises or coming in. Might as well get something back for him and if he can have another good, season somewhere around 50 points then he becomes a very valuable trade chip. Especially considering we would probably have Glass ready to center our third line after this season.
I think Haula needs to center that third line and Stastny the second but those names are more formalities because both lines probably would get almost equal ice time and both experiment with wingers to find the right mix. I think both become lines we look to for offense, as depth scoring was not one of our strong suits most of the time.
I could see Tuch, Tatar, Nosek, Hyka, Carr and possibly Pirri being tried and switched around with both centers to see which groups work best together.