Chabot-DeMelo
Lajoie-Ceci
Harpur-Wideman
Borowiecki
Jaros can continue his development in Belleville
That would be another recipe for failure. If any of them is used as THE top shutdown D-man in the league, he'll get eaten alive.
Gotta find a way to "re-design" the defensive assignments, like the offensive assignments have been without EK. Problem is we don't have a D-man that is very solid defensively like Methot for example. IF anyone expects any of Harpur or Jaros to take Ceci's job and succeed, they might be in for a surprise. Just like when some people wanted Wideman to get that job.
It's because of the emergence of young players (Stone, Hoffman, Pageau, Ceci and Hammond)
They had some pretty great/solid players (Karlsson, Turris, Zibanejad, Ryan, McArthur, Michalek, Methot and Anderson) but were not deep enough, until the emergence of those young guys
It's a bit like this year (so far) with the emergence of Chabot, Lajoie, DeMelo, Tkachuk, Tierney and White (and maybe more to come)
A lot of hyperbolic statements have been made, it will be fun to bump later. I knew we have some very good youth. That's why I kept repeating that I wanted a core around Duchene, Stone, Karlsson and Chabot. Now add Tkachuk to that list.
Didn't expect Lajoie to break out like this right away. Incredible.