Joined: Aug. 2020
Posts: 9,527
Likes: 8,968
Fully agree with points 1, 2, 3 (really hope Ward doesn't follow the usual thought process of "edmonton mean, rinaldo mean, play rinaldo," ritchie can do that, is much bigger to the point of being in the Nurse/Kassian size and weight class, and actually looked good out there today), 6, and 7. I agree with point 5 right now but I don't like it, I'd much prefer Andersson just work lol. It's probably for the best in the short term to take Gio off the PP and give both Valimaki and Hanifin opportunities there though. For the D in general idk how to fix it and am not against your idea in point 4 in theory, but in practice I don't think splitting up Hanifin-Tanev is the right idea, them and Markstrom have been the only consistently positive parts of this team this year. Really disappointed in Andersson, I keep waiting for him to take that next step and become a true top pair RD (at least a consistent #2 if not a #1) but he still has some serious flaws. If the D is gonna be meh anyway I'm not against giving Mackey more reps and/or try a Valimaki-Andersson pair for a while because that is the future. It's really sad to see Gio regressing, I first noticed some uncharacteristic plays during the playoffs but he's gone from reliable #1 to just a step too slow super quickly and very noticeably. I really like your idea of going back to last year's lines, hopefully some old chemistry rekindles and wakes them up. I'd keep Leivo scratched though, Ritchie earned at least another game and I can't think of a single time Leivo's looked good this year. And more than 1 line change per game when there's no mid-game injury should be unacceptable honestly, it just completely messes up any rhythm. I have some more thoughts that I'll expand on in a thread tomorrow (seems like a good point for an initial mid-season analysis...) but yeah I think you pretty much nailed it here.