Quoting: MitchMarnerElite
What are the stats that say the line plays better with Sheary on it? During the 2017 playoffs, Sheary played 3 games w/Sid & Jake vs Columbus, scored 1 point & then got replaced by Hornqvist. He didn’t earn his spot back until the Predators series.
During the 2018 playoffs, the Pens top line was Guentzel-Crosby-Hornqvist. Hornqvist had 11 points in 10 games, but most importantly, he drove to the net & retrieved pucks in the dirty area allowing Guentzel & Crosby to have more space to use their skillset. This allowed Guentzel & Crosby to score 21 points in 12 games. That is the highest scoring rate since Gretzky in 1993.
I agree Hornqvist has been declining, but even last season when they put him w/Sid & Jake during the regular season, the line scored several goals & had a very high expected goals rate (they only fared better w/Simon who’s now injured).
Ummm the whole 16-17 season. He had 53 points playing on crosbys wing for the majority of the season. That was a much larger sample size than the handful of games Hornqvist played well. And again, that was 3 years ago. Hornqvist is older, slower, and taken quite the beating since. He’s not the same player. Sheary is still young. One is soon to be 34, the other just turned 28.
As for the 17 playoffs, Hornqvist played the majority on sids line and scored 9 points. Sheary had 7 points and only played 6-7 games with Crosby? So how can you even believe Hornqvist is a better fit than Sheary lol.
Most importantly, sid doesn’t like playing with him. You don’t tell your face of the franchise to f*** off just to appease Hornqvist. It goes the other way around.
Btw. In 17-18 he only played 10% of the time with Crosby and Guentzel and that line was tied for his worst offensive production. His best production came on the second line with Malkin and Hagelin. Which is where he played the majority of the season.