- Jan 23, 2010
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Obviously if you have four good lines then my comment does not apply. Nowhere did I mean to suggest that all teams should do this; but it surprises me that there are essentially no teams that have.
There have been, especially in the past, teams who have carried a completely junk player who didn't even take regular shifts on the 4th line. They were already effectively playing with 11 forwards + 1 designated fighter. These are the cases where I would swap the PP specialist for the guy who plays 3 minutes anyway.
Fair enough.
The problem with that is they don't really exist. If they did they would be a 18min+ 3rd line checking line.
There are only so many minutes to go around, if the 1st 3 lines are all getting 20 +18+16 min then they are left with 6 min, a big chunk of which is on the PP. The 3C should be able to handle though minutes along with at least one of your top 2 lines.
You might counter with an offensive 3rd line that is weak at defending, but that still the same situation only shifting the labels on the lines.
Having to have a defensively strong 4th line means one of two things
You team is excellent, all the fire power it needs up front and you don't need anything.
Your team is very weak defensively and the 4th line has to carry the defence load for the top 3 lines. Not a bad description of the current Canucks.
That's fine. I think you can get more than 6 minutes out of a decent 4th line, those guys should be contributors on the PK.
huh? no you should be comparing it to the moron you play for 2:30 a game, not the good ones. talk about backwards thinking
also "doing something because its better than past teams" is the literal definition of successfully innovating in this context
Having a capable 4th line with 3 NHL players that are defensively responsible is not some impossible task. A strategy where the best you can say is "at least it's better than having a 2:30 moron" is not ideal.