Nobody forgets it. It was a small sample, if playoff performance mattered in that small sample, Smith would still be here. His regular season play doesn't help us get to the playoffs.
I read it wrong as I thought it said opening night lineup. My bad.
wow, thats awesome! i would take weegar fulltime over petrovic absolutely, but i didnt think management/coaching staff would actually do that. granted its only this 1 game but it shows theyre willing to play him over petro and shows they also have confidence in weegar, which they should. petrovic imo suffers from the same thing that gudbranson did and is too one dimensional. weegar has good size, can throw a big hit when he wants, great awareness, hands, skating, can move the puck, can jump in offensively. a true 2-way d. i like having petrovic's size and physicality, but mccoshen will also help in that aspect.
Sorry FF, I misinterpreted the article from the Cats. Lineup is still open at this point and likely won't have a clue until the morning skate. I'd expect whoever doesn't play Friday to have a shot at getting into the lineup on Saturday unless they play so well that Boughner doesn't want to mess with success.
If I'm reading the opening night roster correctly, Petro is out and the 3rd pairing will Weegar/McCoshen. Smart move against an up tempo/fast team without any real enforcer. Boughner is still playing Haley just in case the cheap shots start happening like the one that put Ek on the shelf for the remainder of the season last year.
Obviously Boughner will work many different combos in the first five or ten games depending on the opponent and how people are playing. Should be interesting as long as we can maintain 500 up thru the first 20 games. Anything above that is gravy.
Ste7e Mason
Exactly. And if we were going to protect him and his horrible contract, we should at least give him a shot to boost his confidence and his stock by skating with Trocheck. Especially considering the guy we have playing there over him is Jamie McGinn.
The only reason Nick hasn’t lived up to anything is cuz he’s spent a lot of the time hurt. I think he should be given a chance to prove he belongs. I mean he had a damn good 2 first seasons. Again, he should definitely be skating with Trocheck and Vrby over McGinn. He was a near 50 point man as a second year player skating with Huby in 2014.
and what did Jamie McGinn do this preseason? A guy who is known as a third line grinder. It makes me laugh that we have no problem giving a roster spot to a kid that clearly isn’t ready to be here but we won’t give one of the highest paid players on the team a chance to bounce back and regain his confidence by putting him in the top 6.
Comparing Bjugy to Bolland is asinine. Bolland brought absolutely nothing and looked lost on the ice. Bjuggy has proved he has good instincts and good hands. He’s never developed the ability to use his size to protect the puck but his reach may mean he doesn’t have to.
We have the $$$ to buy him out if he continues to face plant.
Difference there is McGinn played the whole season last year and Bjuggy played 54 and was probably playing hurt for a bit of those. Bjugstad is definitely the potentially better player than McGinn. He also has a much bigger contract. He deserves that spot if for nothing else than to play himself up before the deadline.
