Joined: May 2017
Posts: 517
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That second line could be problematic. I know Cirelli is extremely good defensively and has shown some good offensive ability too at times, but there’s no true offensive threat there. It also means Palat is getting a lot of ice time without an experienced talent to help cover for him as I expect him to have some difficulty finding his consistency again as he recovers from injury. Killorn is insanely underrated because of our cap situation, but I wouldn’t quite say he’s a top-six forward who can drive offense, and I don’t know who else is on that line. I think Stamkos on that line and Palat paired with Kucherov could be better to make sure teams have two elite lines to counter. That being said, if Kucherov and Stamkos find a good way to effectively compliment each other rather than adopting unnatural roles they think will help most on an already talented line, they can take care of most offensive needs and all we need from the second line is defense. With decent chemistry it looks among the best shutdown lines there is, so I guess we’ll see and it could honestly work out either way. The third line, with a little bit of time, could probably near the top of the League as far as third lines go, and the fourth line looked very good during preseason (as did the defensive pairings, although Hedman concerns me because he doesn’t exactly look healthy right now). I guess I like it. Every line and every pairing definitely has a role and has some of the best talent around to fulfill that role, and there’s no area of the game being neglected, but no line looks able to reliably cover if another line has a few bad nights.
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