I don't know why you would think it's so outside the box. This has been done for years with star players. They did it with Forsberg when he was young, did it with Duchene when he was younger, lots of teams try it out. It's just a suggestion for when they're down in a game anyway.
True, but you if you're quick enough to get in the shooting lanes, and close enough, you're not risking big slap shots coming your way that you have to block. That's why you didn't see Sakic going down to block big shots on the PK.
It only gasses the forward if they're playing tons of minutes 5 on 5 and on the PP. They're not doing that with Nate. A lot of times those extra PK shifts help get a star forward into the game.
It just set off a rant, so I don't even remotely feel like defending my word vomit lol.
I don't even completely agree with the entire post when I'm being objective.
Edit : I was kind of curious as to how many people would respond negatively to the Fan vs Roy comments, not as many as one would expect to be honest. The waters are clearly murky around here when it comes to how the team has been managed recently.
Also, I personally like the idea. But I like the way Roy has used Duchene for the last shift of the PK on occasion (Wish that happened more).
I also feel like at this point they need to take the kid gloves off a bit, play MacK a fair amount and let him learn through the mistakes. I don't like seeing MacKinnon & 14 minutes next to each other. At least hes been kept at center though. At the start of the season I advocated for MacK to center the third line with O'Reilly in the #2 spot, and in addition having MacK play RW as the exception to in game situations vs the rule (or to start the game).
That was done on occasion last year, but not so much this year. The idea would be to let him grow into facing tougher competition over the course of the season, instead of right away. Roy did try O'Reilly at center for a short time, but we all know how O'Reilly has been playing. Hes been no where near the 50-60 point all situation forward that hes been in past years.
As slow as Roy has been to react and change, I'd put his NHL Coach Stubbornness meter around 6. Maybe 5. As much as he frustrates me from time to time, to be honest Quenneville frustrated me about 1000 times more, and obviously Q is a pretty damn good coach. And Ken Hitchcock makes Q look positively weak-willed by comparison.
That's not to say he couldn't have realized the system wasn't working, oh, I don't know, THE PRESEASON. But even the best of NHL coaches make some of the most mind-boggling decisions, and just have a stubborn streak a mile long. It's like a prerequisite to the job or something.
You know what I do like? Usually, eventually, at some point... He does end up making changes and adjustments that are positive. Maybe not in the order of or exactly what we think should happen, but he does prove that hes not up against a brick wall with no where to go like Sacco.
I'm getting the sense that hes also stopped with the constant line juggling as well. I'm not really a fan of Landeskog - MacK/Mitchell - Iginla, and think Iginla should be next to Duchene like others, but I do respect the fact that hes given his line experiments longer before blowing it up as of late.
His line combinations seem like less of a panic move as of late as well, regardless of if I agree or disagree.
I still dislike his first decision a lot, but the ship usually ends up in the right direction even if it's slower than I'd like.
