I think Frattin has been playing better but he's not a LW. Richards had a respiratory infection in December which iS part of the reason for his slump after coming out so strong. As far as people saying Toffoli should be on the 2nd line over Frattin, he wasn't scoring before the demotion so that's why Sutter is sitting him now.
I'd love to see Brown/Kopi/Williams together with Kopi charging the net which is when he's most effective. Put King/Richards/Carter together and leave them there.
I want to be behind Frattin, for a couple of days I almost was!
But here is the issue... Frattin looks like he should be doing good. He is trying hard and doing the right thing... But can we really say he is playing better?
By what metric? Because unfortunately he pretty much hasn't accomplished a damn thing...
I would be more behind him I think if he was doing something horribly wrong. Then we would have something to fix, but the truth is he has consistently "played well" while horribly under performing, to me that is the worst possibility because at some point it means we have to accept that there may just be nothing there.
Serious question. I am a fan of the Kings, one of my favorite western teams. I don't think Toffoli would be a magic bullet, but it sure would seem like he could help a bit.
Why is he not playing? Presumably there are top 6 players ahead of him that are there to score and are not getting the job done. Why not inject him to that top 6 and see if he can get a little offense going.
IMO he has looked at least serviceable as a scoring forward, even in the playoffs. Odd that a team the seems to only lacking scoring (desperately) has him stapled to the bench. Am I missing something?
Maybe, maybe not... who the hell knows
I will say though, for all the excitement of toffoli (I like him too), he isn't necessarily the crazy sniper people hold him to be. More then anything he just has a strong shot mentality. He will shoot while being tripped at the blue line, he will shoot while loosing an edge behind the net, he will shoot while there is no lane from a bad angle and he will shoot from the point. He isn't a bad shooter but I think his willingness to shoot is more responsible then his actual shot. It worked a bit better when he was some rookie who wasn't really being covered, but he hasn't produced much since they started paying more attention to his shots (recognizing full well that lines and ice time plays a role in his tapering off as well). Regardless of whatever reasons, its been a while since he put one in and if he is not doing that Sutter probably isnt going to show much love.
