Quoting: Preston_Mattesich
Only is a strong word. Sens ranked 29 in GF and 21 in xGF. They may have a few more needs at forward than just a top 6 winger. Kuokannen can play wing if you're intent on not changing the center core.
Drake Batherson missed 36 games (he was THE offense catalyst before Stutzle started breaking out), Norris and Chabot missed a good chunk as well. Several other key injuries. Team was hit hard by covid when the NHL wasn't canceling games. Defense was pretty bad for a good chunk of the season which doesn't help offense (transition). Stutzle also took some time to get going, basically after November 24th when he moved to Center. Not to mention, all the important guys were 19 y/o to 23 y/o + the OLD Thomas Chabot who turned 25 y/o in january
Tkachuk - Norris - ???????
??????? - Stutzle - Batherson
Formenton - Pinto - Brown
Joseph - Kastelic - White
Crookshank - Kelly - Watson
Connor Brown paced for 50 pts (for the 3rd year in a row), 87% of his production in Ottawa came from ES+PK as he is mostly deployed defensively
Mathieu Joseph was buried in Tampa's depth, had 12 pts in 11 games with Ottawa, great instant chemistry with Tkachuk/Norris
Formenton scored 18 goals at ES/PK in his rookie season
Pinto is a blue chip prospect
White has paced between 0.38 and 0.58 in his 4 NHL seasons, strong possession player, good defensively
Kastelic is a prototypical 4th line center, strong defensively, strong physically, great on face-offs, can fight, can chip in offensively.
I have all these guys in the bottom-6. Even the 5th line is a NHL line.
There's also Ridly Greig who might be hard to keep off the lineup. And then Egor Sokolov, Viktor Lodin, Roby Jarventie, etc looking to make the roster but won't have any spot.
So where do Kuokannen play?