Come on. The last thing we need is more "big hitters." The Greening-Smith-Neil line already takes way too much ice time away from the actual good players in the lineup.
Ya, that's a load of BS. Our skill players don't play hard enough and usually take periods of games off. The majority of the best teams in the league are filled with big physical players. Teams like the Bruins, Kings, Blues, Ducks and Sharks are all examples of this.
Also the fact that this fan base complains about the ice time of the GSN line is a strong indication of what they know about hockey. That line is used to shutdown the top line of the opposition, therefore they need to be one the ice every time the oppositions first line is out there. Hence the amount of ice time they get.
It seems like a lot of posters on here are under the misconception that a team can effectively play European style hockey in the NHL. You simply can't play a pure finesse game on the smaller ice surface with bigger players who like to hit. It is a completely different game. It also seems like many of you don't understand hockey because you have no appreciation for role players. If playing 4 lines and 3 d pairings of pure finesse players was actually effective, then teams would start building there teams like that. But zero teams build a roster of all finesse players and the ones that have too many finesse players often don't make it anywhere in the playoffs.
What you need to be successful are gritty skilled players (Koptar, Malkin, Getzlaf, Perry, Benn, Doughty, Weber, Subban) and quality role players.
Our forward core isn't a very physical group and the ones that are, aren't very good at it. Greening may take the body on a regular basis, but he is hardly an effective physical player, much like Michalek is hardly an effective top six player at this point. There are gradations in quality in terms of physical players and the majority of our physical players aren't very effective at being physical. Hence the need to bring in better quality ones.
