Thoughts on Julien's benching...

[Gordon Lightfoot]

I'm all for Paille on a 2nd or 3rd line. But only as a temporary thing. Paille is not a top six (maybe even nine) guy on a team that has the Cup in mind. I love the guy but he's just not.

 

[CombatOnContact]

So Julien admits that Spooner played well between Lucic and Horton, but struggled on the 3rd line (with the great pandolfo). So whywhywhy did he only get one chance in that role???? With the LKH line struggling, and he has now broken them up, why didnt he give Spooner more opportunity in that line?? And krejci might have been exactly what Peverley needed. Why not give that a try before sending Spooner back to providence??

Oh right.. because.. pandolfo.

 

[World of Wardlow]

First it was Bourque, now it's Pandolfo. Not sure why he's playing. Also, why bring up Caron if you're only going to give him less than 10 minutes per game? At this point Julien should bench Lucic - at the very least.

 

[thornton22]

These are the lines I'd like to see:

Lucic - Krejci - Seguin (Is Claude just stubborn? This line scored in the first 30 seconds he rolled it out this year and always looks balanced AND dangerous).

Marchand - Bergeron - Horton (Bergy and March have the chemistry. When Segs is out there, I see one or two OMG passes from him a game and they *never* seem to pay off).

Paille - Spooner - Peverly - Paille has been great lately, one of the only guys that seems to be able to dictate play when he is on the ice right now. I'd love to see what kind of game Spooner can display if he has somebody actually putting pressure on the D and creating opportunities).

Caron - Campbell - Thorton (Caron is a big body and seems to make most of his negligible impact playing defensive, cautionary hockey. Keep him with the grinders).

I'd switch Horton and Paille but otherwise I really like this.