People say that the 4th line doesn't matter...Yet the two teams in the finals both made it there last year in quite a large part because of really really solid play by their 4th lines. They could actually play solid minutes, that's the key, they did not need to be protected and they would come at you with all lines and wear your team down. You need that to be successful, IMO. Guys like Peluso are the past.
The Kings turned their season around because of 3 factors. 1)Coaching change. 2)Acquiring a top end sniper 3)Perhaps most importantly THEY FIXED THEIR DEPTH, by scratching Westgarth, sending down useless Moreau and Hunter and calling up Dwight King and Jordan Nolan.
4th lines and depth matter big time, IMO. And I think we have screwed ours up. James Wright is a decent pickup (he's a better Macenauer IMO) but he cannot slide into any other role than hitting grinding defensive forward (ie Chris Thorburn part 2). Peluso is going to hold this team back not allowing them to roll 4 lines. Machacek could have been huge adding hitting and more importantly offense to the bottom line. As it stands we have nobody in the bottom line that can move into a more offensive role in the top 9, Machacek would have been great as a 4th liner that can easily slide into any line and role we need. But no we needed that fighter.
Scheifele says hi for the time being. If Scheifele goes down in 5 games there is a chance Machacek comes back up. I'm not sure why you are making a big deal about this, he clearly didn't get the job done in camp and it sounds like he thought he had it made during the year according to his coach. This is a wake up call for him, lets hope he goes down and plays hard so that he gets called up when and if Mark gets sent down or the Jets suffer injuries.