Faulk and Krug probably still play together but I like it otherwise

We shouldn't sign Neal unless it's for league min- like Brouwer in 2019-20. He's having a nice preseason but you need to be able to waive him easily and not be paying him a ton of money in the minors.

Based on what I've been seeing I think it will shake out like:

Perron - O'Reilly - Kyrou
Saad - Thomas - Tarasenko
Neal/Brown/Kostin - Schenn- Buchnevich
Neal/Brown/Kostin - Barbashev - Neal/Brown/Kostin
Scandella - Parayko
Krug - Faulk
Walkman - Mikkola

Although it should be:

Perron - O'Reilly- Buchnevich
Saad - Schenn - Tarasenko
Neal/Brown/Kostin - Thomas - Kyrou
Neal/Brown/Kostin - Barbashev - Neal/Brown/Kostin
Scandella - Parayko
Krug - Faulk
Perunovich - Mikkola

Playing Buchnevich and Saad or Schenn on the third line is just a waste. Schenn's usage should be more limited than it was last year, but Saad and Buchnevich will need (and deserve) large amounts of playing time to be effective at their cap hits. I know we're all high on them, but Thomas and Kyrou should be anchoring that third line and running PP2, and if they perform well there we can give them more responsibility as things develop. Neither one has been outstandingly impressive in camp so far, so I don't know why we're forcing them into top six roles to start when there's other guys who have a better track record of doing that. It's not like playing them on the third line to start is going to stunt their development. If anything, overplaying them will do that.