Wheeler and Scheifele sucked together this year 5v5 yet no adjustment was ever made. Really don’t understand that. Do they have more say in who they play with than he does?
Other than that, most of the issues could probably be traced to injuries.
They sucked together and Ehlers was the only player that made them a serviceable line, almost never happened.
Little-Laine have sucked together for 2 years now. Never taken apart.
Connor-Hayes-Laine looked great together, only gets 2 games.
Copp-Lowry-Tanev always amazing together. Separated for the majority of the year.
Little looked good with exactly 3 players this season. Perreault, Roslovic, and Copp. Continued to be stuck with Laine.
A few seasons ago, to finish off the season, Armia-Copp-Petan was our best line during our longest winning streak in franchise history. Never, ever, revisited.
Connor and Roslovic tore up the AHL together and whenever they happen to be on the ice together briefly during line changes they always make something happen. Never tried together except occasionally in overtime where shocker, they were amazing together.
Scheifele and Wheeler are bad penalty killers, #2 unit with Copp and Little as the #3 unit causing Scheif and Wheeler to play way too many minutes, possibly bringing down other areas of their games.
Roslovic benched for Hendricks.
Niku benched for Beaulieu.
Rarely made in-game adjustments. Had to watch a full game against Dallas of the Jets trying to dump and chase (already a bad way to go) and Bishop grabbing the puck behind the net and breaking it out. Never changed. Dump, Bishop grabs it, clears the zone. For 60 minutes.
Players seem to get punished for creativity. Ehlers saw way too few minutes in a lot of games despite having great defensive numbers seemingly because he's not North-South enough. Related note he's one of the best zone entry players in the league, I get the impression Maurice doesn't like that he doesn't stick to the dump and chase plan. But that's just my own speculation.
Young players get punished way too harshly for making mistakes while established players can make the same ones 10 times over and it's fine. Again, seems to want to work the creativity out of young players' games regardless of how effective they are.
My issue with Maurice is that he seems to take apart what is working, and stick with what isn't and I can't understand why. Like this isn't just my own eye test saying these things, the numbers back it up too. It's like he's trying to prove that he's smarter than everyone by going against the grain. I'm one person who will be happy when he's gone.