It certainly is fair to include them.
But it is hard to overlook that what we are seeing from Malkin's line right now has been foreseen since the start of this season. He simply isn't the problem on that line and he is not even close to being as wasteful as Sid when it comes to giveaways.
What makes him great is that he can hold possession in the offensive zone and survey options to set up others or take shots himself like no other players. But he needs to actually have possession and right now he doesn't unless he skates the puck in or wins the puck there himself. Neal skates in and shoots from any angle and wins very few puck battles although at least he is willing to play the body. Jokinen does some OK work in coverage to help the line be solid defensively, but adds ABSOLUTELY nothing to what the others do offensively. He loses every battle, never hits, isn't part of the forecheck and does not come in to support when there's an attempt at cycling. Knowing the kind of player he is, that is exactly why some of us have said - ALL SEASON - that he should not be that lines third wheel. I don't care that he is a better offensive player than Talbot and Fedotenko were back then; what they did was liberate Malkin and make help him be the best he could be. That is much more important, and I am about to puke every time I read that Malkin has the best wingers on the team without people comprehending that it is not about who is the better player but who is the better fit.
Bylsma stumbled into that with Bennett and Stempniak on Sutter's wing, because suddenly we saw three players there who could all play a style of game complimentary of one another. They can even cycle the puck because all of them work hard, skate and support each other. Bylsma always have to stumble into things because complementarity is something he just doesn't understand, and then when he finds an acorn and it suddenly works, our media hillbillies consider that a sign of him making a great adjustment, never mind that such revelatory coaching decisions have been cried for here for months or sometimes years. So, same as last year with Iginla/Neal? Yes. No lessons learned. Whatsoever.
Now, as regards Crosby.... I really don't know where he was after the first period yesterday. His decision making was just terrible and he seemed oddly off in most everything he did. We of course need him to be quite a bit more than that, but it didn't help that it was rarely Nisky-Maatta behind his line. We really should not discount the import of having our top two ES D-pairings both have one guy who cannot support the way Dan is trying to have us play offense. They don't hold the line either, because they are rightly afraid of what they'd do under pressure, and when we are camped in our zone you see two Columbus D-men encroach on our zone, being most often 5-10 feet inside our blueline when their forwards have gotten the puck deep and established their forecheck. We used to do that also you say? Yes, "used to" being the operative words. When you cannot push up your D-men you cannot have an effective cycle/forecheck, because there will always be too many gaps to bring the puck out. Nothing could be more ironic when considering how we have been drafting and what guys like Despres and Bortuzzo's natural games are like.
As for effort.... well, I think the hated and admittedly unreliable 'real time stats' show us much of what we need to know... it is not that people don't skate... but I should make another thread for that. Will be up a little later.
