Peat
Registered User
- Jun 14, 2016
- 29,597
- 25,418
I dunno, I just thought one of our biggest problems was supposed to be that we were tired from the last couple years, and one of Sheahan's biggest problems was supposed to be that he didn't have good enough wingers in Detroit last year. Sheahan should be fresh as a daisy and he's got better wingers than Sid or Geno now.
As for needing different wingers...if Sheahan had started with Kuhn and Rust and wasn't producing people would be saying he needed a Kessel or Guentzel on his line.
I'm not drawing definitive conclusions here but maybe we should start expecting this to be Sheahan's norm rather than some 100 game aberration.
True. They would. And they'd be right, because Kuhn and Rust is a not-great balance on a line. Just neither is Guentzel-Kessel. If management could make it a principle to have one piano-lifter and one piano-player as the wings on each line, that would make me really happy. Almost as happy as winning a bunch of games in style.
But if you're going to have all skill or all graft on the wings, at least put it with the guy who's getting the zone starts to make use of them.
As for Sheahan in Detroit... I thought his main problem was he simply couldn't shoot for crap in a weird aberrational way that is usually going to bounce back. I knew he had awful line mates this year, but don't recall anything being said about last year. But that could be my memory.
In any case, I'd like to judge him here, rather than in Blashill's Blehness. And I'd like to do it after 20 games or so, preferably some when the whole team haven't been cursed.
edit: If DobberHockey is accurate, then its really hard to judge Sheahan's Detroit line mates, as it appears he was the village bicycle and probably wasn't with any particular line mate for more than 20% of his ice time. Certainly not with any settled line for more than 9% of it.