ATD 2023 Lineup Advice Thread

[Claude The Fraud]

Any thoughts or advices about my line-up?

Thanks in advance!

Coach: Lester Patrick
Captain: Ray Bourque
Alternate: Rod Brind’Amour
Alternate: Ebbie Goodfellow

#55 Baldy Northcott - #7 Frank Boucher - #22 Mike Bossy
#16 Cy Denneny - #17 Marty Barry - #10 Vladimir Martinec
#20 Jiri Holik - #19 Rod Brind’Amour - #33 Tony Amonte
#27 John Tonelli - #18 Walt Tkaczuk - #11 Bob Nevin
#61 Pat Lafontaine - #14 Brian Sutter

#77 Ray Bourque - #6 Alexei Kasatonov
#5 Ebbie Goodfellow - #2 Jimmy Thomson
#23 Mike Ramsey - #3 «Bullet» Joe Simpson
#96 Phil Housley

#29 Ken Dryden
#32 Jonathan Quick

PP1
Denneny(net)
Boucher-Bossy
Goodfellow-Bourque

PP2
Brind'Amour(net)
Barry-Martinec
Simpson-Kasatonov

PK1
Brind'Amour-Nevin
Ramsey-Bourque

PK2
Boucher-Martinec
Goodfellow-Thomson/Kasatonov

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Done and done

1) The fact that you have bi-lateral Wingers makes for greater ease-of-allowance for dressing 7 Ds, but which Forward will you be sitting? Looks like it'll be Gary Roberts- since you have Finnigan penciled in on PK2.

2) Please consider re-assigning Dit Clapper over to Right D... or else risk having the only RHS playing LD & getting top-4 minutes in the entire league. Looks like Black Jack Stewart is reasonably bi-lateral... so that seems the obvious escape-hatch.

 

[tinyzombies]

1) The fact that you have bi-lateral Wingers makes for greater ease-of-allowance for dressing 7 Ds, but which Forward will you be sitting? Looks like it'll be Gary Roberts- since you have Finnigan penciled in on PK2.

2) Please consider re-assigning Dit Clapper over to Right D... or else risk having the only RHS playing LD & getting top-4 minutes in the entire league. Looks like Black Jack Stewart is reasonably bi-lateral... so that seems the obvious escape-hatch.

Park is a lefty - but i need my best d on the left side because of my opponents and Clapper was a LD primarily other than the one Cup year he played RD and Crawford played LD on the pairing, Did Stewart and Goldham play together in Detroit?

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Park is a lefty - but i need my best d on the left side because of my opponents and Clapper was a LD primarily other than the one Cup year he played RD and Crawford played LD on the pairing, Did Stewart and Goldham play together in Detroit?

The information I have to-hand suggests that Clapper got post-season All-Star consideration at LD because of a comparative dearth of candidates. That said, I see three scenarios that would justify using an RHS at LD:

1) The "Tim Horton spot-use" model, going to the L-side to better impede the stick-side of a counter-shot RW (LHS playing RW) like Maurice Richard. In your Division, you have two such opponents who fit that category- Bure & Mogilny. In Conference, we can add Hextall to that roll. Just doesn't seem like enough...

2) The "International Ice use" model- like [Undrafted Soviet who led Summit Series Ds in scoring], where the ice is wider side-to-side, to the point that handedness-of-shot doesn't matter so much. I picked this player as a reserve in 2021.

3) The "Special Teams Specialist" model, used to some success by @ImporterExporter in OPPF 2021 and currently being taken for a spin by @Johnny Engine this year.

Just feels like you leave some value on-the-table by using Clapper at LD. I DO recognize that you some monsters at RW in your Division- and I know that moving Clapper over to the right would impel you to use Whitey Stapleton in a top-4 minutes capacity... but hey, it worked in ATD 2021...

 

[tinyzombies]

The information I have to-hand suggests that Clapper got post-season All-Star consideration at LD because of a comparative dearth of candidates. That said, I see three scenarios that would justify using an RHS at LD:

1) The "Tim Horton spot-use" model, going to the L-side to better impede the stick-side of a counter-shot RW (LHS playing RW) like Maurice Richard. In your Division, you have two such opponents who fit that category- Bure & Mogilny. In Conference, we can add Hextall to that roll. Just doesn't seem like enough...

2) The "International Ice use" model- like [Undrafted Soviet who led Summit Series Ds in scoring], where the ice is wider side-to-side, to the point that handedness-of-shot doesn't matter so much. I picked this player as a reserve in 2021.

3) The "Special Teams Specialist" model, used to some success by @ImporterExporter in OPPF 2021 and currently being taken for a spin by @Johnny Engine this year.

Just feels like you leave some value on-the-table by using Clapper at LD. I DO recognize that you some monsters at RW in your Division- and I know that moving Clapper over to the right would impel you to use Whitey Stapleton in a top-4 minutes capacity... but hey, it worked in ATD 2021...

Dearth or not he was still the best D in the league, which further boosts his quality that he was the best at either side?

Also he won a Cup at LD.

Also- what if scenario- what if he had played d his whole career? He could skate, had hands, there is video of him finishing and carrying through a crowd, he could hit like a truck…. He’d be much higher ranked than he is now?

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Typically, we're not big fans of having two letters on the same line- but I don't see how one DOESN'T give a letter to Lindsay. Is there any defense for doing otherwise?!

You have to give a letter to Lindsay. Not only is he a great leader, but you don't have any other real options.

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Consistent with a perspective I had expressed previously (Q.V.: OPPF 2021):

I've already mentioned how I don't like letters on the same line, but Ted Lindsay is such a Leader in his own right that I think about that old Hans Sachs wisdom that says "the value of a rule may be gauged by the possibility that it allows for an exception!"

Thanks.

 

[overpass]

Dearth or not he was still the best D in the league, which further boosts his quality that he was the best at either side?

Also he won a Cup at LD.

Also- what if scenario- what if he had played d his whole career? He could skate, had hands, there is video of him finishing and carrying through a crowd, he could hit like a truck…. He’d be much higher ranked than he is now?

Yeah I think Clapper has a big what if in his career. He played D as a junior and the Bruins moved him to forward, because they had Shore and Hitchman at D in an era where the first string D played 50 minutes, and they needed a bigger role for Clapper.

On another team, maybe he plays D his whole career and racks up the all-star teams. And even on the Bruins, if they had him move back to D in the early 30s instead of trying to save money on their roster and go cheap on D subs, Clapper at D could easily have made the difference in winning another Cup between 1929 and 1939.

 

[tinyzombies]

Yeah I think Clapper has a big what if in his career. He played D as a junior and the Bruins moved him to forward, because they had Shore and Hitchman at D in an era where the first string D played 50 minutes, and they needed a bigger role for Clapper.

On another team, maybe he plays D his whole career and racks up the all-star teams. And even on the Bruins, if they had him move back to D in the early 30s instead of trying to save money on their roster and go cheap on D subs, Clapper at D could easily have made the difference in winning another Cup between 1929 and 1939.

Nice info, I need to read up on this guy some more. Of course we all fall in love with the guys we draft so this is nothing new, but seeing gmdootage of him that I didn’t know existence was shocking.

 

[The Macho King]

Woody Dumart - Mario Lemieux - Jari Kurri
Dean Prentice - Joe Sakic - Alexander Maltsev
Johnny Gottselig - Jean Ratelle - Cecil Dillon
Wayne Cashman - Pit Lepine - Claude Lemieux

Chris Pronger - Jacques Laperriere
Mark Howe - Art Coulter
Mike Grant - Lionel Hitchman

Georges Vezina
Roberto Luongo

PP1:
Maltsev
Kurri - Mario - Sakic
Pronger

PP2:
Prentice
Mario - Ratelle - Dillon
Howe

PK1
Dumart - Lepine
Coulter - Laperriere

PK2
Gottselig - Dillon
Pronger - Hitchman

Appreciate comments on special teams and LW deployment especially.

Any other thoughts?

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Advice?

PK1: Stewart-Goldham-Schmidt-Bentley
PK2: Staple-Crawford/Park-Elias-Finnigan

Guess I'll also ask the "who goes inside the face-off circle for PK2" question...

 

[tinyzombies]

Guess I'll also ask the "who goes inside the face-off circle for PK2" question...

Fixed thanks

 

[ChiTownPhilly]

Any other thoughts?

Surprised no-one else has weighed in on the LW-deployment issue. I was waiting to see if others had any input. It does feel like Dean Prentice on a scoring line might be a casting-stretch in a 19-franchise draft.

My rough outline would have been:

Gottselig (scoring Winger with some defensive structure awareness)-M. Lemieux (Mr. Everything in the Offensive Zone)-Kurri (Defensive Conscience).

Dumart (Defensive Conscience)-Sakic-Maltsev

Prentice-Ratelle-Dillon (for the All-Ranger-Pride third line- even if there was very little overlap between Prentice and Ratelle in real-life). Downside is that scoring dips on line #3- but you can minute-manage that aspect of things... and it DOES seem like a cool 'Defensive Zone Starts' line.

Well- that's my reasoning- and I've shown my work-- so I'd be interested in the thoughts you had. I'm humble enough to recognize that you may have noticed some things about your personnel that I haven't considered...