The Note in MI
Bow to the pyramid
The sheer variation in lines provided here is pretty crazy. A lot of them I whole heartedly disagree with in concept and form. Many I think are very close to what we are going to see. I anticipate at least one big injury in the top 9 at an early point in the season because that’s just how things work. Therefore without knowing who that person is, we can’t really speculate given the flexibility our available players provides. I feel pretty comfortable saying that down the middle we will have Schenn ROR and Bozak to start though Thomas being a wild card to overtake any one of those positions. Schwartz and Tarasenko are locks at their respective wings. Jaskin given lack of true RW depth and his possession capability probably takes the 4RW spot.
That leaves
Schwartz Schenn -
- ROR Tarasenko
- Bozak -
- - Jaskin
Obviously that’s not a huge reach but similarly there is still a chance much of that is wrong. This isn’t a bad thing to have. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all shakes out come camp as we have a lot of guys who could make an argument to shed the 4th line grind line and run a more skilled line who is able to provide solid defense.
I will say that talk of a grind and PK 4th line is not the end all be all answer. There aren’t many (perhaps any) teams capable of rolling out as skilled of a fourth line as we may be able to, and you therefore can’t place that mold on our team. And you’d be doing our roster a major injustice to run out a lesser team just to fit roles, IMO.
We have plenty of responsible two way players to fill a PK unit and given the skill throughout the lineup that PK time is ok to distribute to more “star” players because they won’t be required to play 20 min a night now.
That leaves
Schwartz Schenn -
- ROR Tarasenko
- Bozak -
- - Jaskin
Obviously that’s not a huge reach but similarly there is still a chance much of that is wrong. This isn’t a bad thing to have. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all shakes out come camp as we have a lot of guys who could make an argument to shed the 4th line grind line and run a more skilled line who is able to provide solid defense.
I will say that talk of a grind and PK 4th line is not the end all be all answer. There aren’t many (perhaps any) teams capable of rolling out as skilled of a fourth line as we may be able to, and you therefore can’t place that mold on our team. And you’d be doing our roster a major injustice to run out a lesser team just to fit roles, IMO.
We have plenty of responsible two way players to fill a PK unit and given the skill throughout the lineup that PK time is ok to distribute to more “star” players because they won’t be required to play 20 min a night now.