I am curious to see the line together but I get what your saying. PJ on that line I’d be curious to see as well and Yamo with 29/97.
Bottom line is we have tons of options now. Let’s see what works and what doesn’t.
Our point is then do it earlier in preseason. Changing things and trying things in your last pre season game or 2 is really against the norm. Early preseason is for tinkering, late preseason is to get your lines.
I mean you can always try stuff and see if it works but pretty often you can tell some things that obviously don’t work.
Nuge as a center works best if he isn’t the most offensively talented guy on his line. If he can dish rather than be “the guy”. Yamamoto and Hyman are kind of like that too. So putting them all together is counter intuitive with how they play. Same with loading up McDrai with Puljujarvi. You are forcing Puljujarvi into a third man role where he has to be one fetching pucks and crashing the net. It’s forcing him into a complimentary role where he thrives as a guy pushing the pace.
Which is why Puljujarvi looked so good with Hyman and McDavid rather than last game where he was hugely neutered with McDrai.
And I mean we can’t pretend like coaches are infallible and always know what they are doing. League wide coaches try weird dumb combos that people know won’t work but the coaches continue try and force it.
Not saying it won’t work, miracles happen but it’s definitely not a good way to deploy our top 6 guys.