Teemusalami204
Registered User
I definitely get it but it was really kind of below the belt to throw a player under the bus when he isn't some sort of wizard outside of shooting either. Especially a player that was committed to the team from day 1 regardless of who he played with. I get that he wants to score goals, he's hungry for it. But even though it seems like scoring goals is the only aim of a team, it isn't. Winning games is. If Laine scores 3 goals but the other team scores 4. Laine looks great but we still lost. There needs to be a balance throughout the lineup.
I agree though forward lines shouldn't be this static thing that we roll out in some predictable fashion. I've long been a proponent of having 6 or 7 or more different combos you can roll out during certain situations. The main trouble with that is you need the depth at center to do that. Which is something we have not really had ever, outside of one season with Stastny. Having that depth at C allows you to move guys all over the place, giving players all kinds of different looks with different outcomes in mind. Having that depth also means you don't need to rely so much on your top guys and can feel more comfortable rolling out different combos to test certain situations. I do not think Maurice is that kind of coach but we also haven't really seen him with a full season of depth at center. Though to be fair not many coaches tend to do that because of job security. They roll with what works, until it doesn't and then they try to find something else that works and roll with that.
It's hard to expirement to much when you're job depends entirely on success. Not many coaches are given a long enough leash to really go all out. Even Maurice likely doesn't have that long of a leash.
maurices job hasn’t depended on the process he’s had a lot of years of freebie job security to try new things