Hurrah for Weegs!

I take back what I said about wanting to see more from Ritchie, if he wants to be in a box, leave him in the press box.

All i can say is lol at these lines

Oh the excitement.

Yup, Sutter finally found the blend button once again. As much as I respect him, his line choices have infuriated me all season

Vegas is a Bigger Team, so fine, bring in Ritchie who is Younger and can actually Score and/or Gilbert who will lay out Hits and Fight if need be, but to play Lucic at all and over Duehr & Pelletier is just terrible. Good on Stecher for Fighting tonight though, way to Grip & Rip hey lol

Will be interesting to see what Mang does, but he's a Sniper and Lindy & Toff (both Snipers as well) need a Play Maker, so why not put Ruzicka back in that spot?

Huby didn't click with Lindy well at all, but he did with Backlund, so why not give them a Sniper like Toffoli (12.1% Shot Percentage), Mangiapane (8.5% = 1/2 what he's usually good for), Duehr (16.7% and he's got speed), Dube (14.4%) or Ruzicka (10.2%); not Coleman

Ruzicka-Lindholm-Toffoli
Huberdeau-Backlund-Mang/Duehr/Dube
Pelletier/Dube/Mang-Kadri-Coleman
Ritchie-Lewis-Dube/Duehr

OR

Ruzicka-Lindholm-Mang/Toffoli
Huberdeau-Backlund-Toffoli/Mang
Pelletier-Kadri-Duehr/Coleman
Ritchie-Dube-Coleman/Duehr

Pelletier isn't scoring enough, but at least he's good defensively and on the back & stick check; maybe don't put him out in OT just yet though

I like Weegar-Andersson and Hanifin-Tanev pairings and had no problem with Zadorov-Gilbert, even if Stecher is more experienced and might be better. Gilbert is Bigger, Tougher and Isn't Afraid to jump up in to the play in the O-Zone either

Huby, Backlund, Mang sounds good to me. As much as I would like to see Toffoli move around trying to wake up some other guys, I see how it doesn't make a lot of sense screwing with one of the few things that actually works.

Putting Rosy back up with Lindy and Toff again makes sense to me.

I could sum up the problems with this team in one sentence: No franchise elite player. There is no real threat from any one player on this team.

I would say Huby and Lindholm have the potential to be considered that, but just aren't there this year. I would agree that they need an elite goal scorer to complement them. Too bad there weren't any of those for sale this year 🙄

Any team that hit turns on the blender too often is doomed to fail. Though I do think our lines needed some tinkering i think this is just absurd. I konda hope that we just promote Sutter to president of hockey ops this summer. That way he's not GM and he's not coach but he's still part of the organization. He's still got a good relationship with ownership and that is an important thing for that position as dealing with ownership is one of their main purposes.

I think there were far greater expectations of Huberderdeau and Markstrom this season obviously, but the rest is likely by design

Treliving would rather have a balanced lineup throughout than a Super Star and a bunch of league minimum Bottom-9 and 3rd Pairing D-Men. Our Prospects haven't really stepped in and made an impression like we'd hoped either

All-in-All, Sutter's right, we're not getting the Big Goals from the Top Guys when we need them, our Goaltending has been Spotty and Below Average and between Injuries and Kylington being out, our Defence Pairings have been a revolving door all year. Nobody is playing to their full potential other than maybe Toffoli, Backlund & Lewis and maybe Andersson & Coleman

Kinda puts whoever the GM is, in a tough position to be able to do their job with any sort of autonomy, but if it gets him off the bench I'm cool with it.

Sure, but Sutter can't play the game for them and if it's not working, you gotta do something, otherwise by definition you're insane if you simply do the same thing over and over and yet expect different results

Seems like when the lines have been changed, it helps jump start them for a bit only to fall off again, even the Mang-Backs-Coleman line has died recently

We haven't been able to find anything that has clicked or been solid, consistent & reliable all season; well other than us all agreeing Lucic will be in the lineup and probably shouldn't be

I'm not sure I want to necessarily become a Sutter defender, but his system has had us out playing and out shooting our opponents the vast majority of the time, yet we haven't gotten the goals or saves we needed to win more games and have just had way too many defensive breakdowns this year, especially on the PP and after dominating the play for a prolonged period of time

Huberdeau is absolutely that caliber of player. Outside of Gaudreau and Tkachuk go look at the last like 5 star players to be coached by Sutter. Brown, Kopitar, Iginla, Selanne, Bolen, Friesen. They all had major drop offs in production under Sutter

Then you bring in a confident GM. Tre is a confident Gam so i dont mind him coming back. Dubas is a confident GM, despite some of his flaws he's still not going to be pushed around

I don't disagree with the "Sutter effect". Huberdeau's best years are behind him though. I'm sure he will bounce back to a reasonable 80+ point level. He isn't a franchise maker though, and certainly not at 10MM against the cap. Every team that has one the cup in the last 20 years has had an Elite top line center or Defender (sometimes both) in their prime. You need a concentration of talent in a few key positions to win: scoring by committee in a mediocre fashion doesn't win cups. If Fox, Gudreau and Tkachuk stayed, it would be a different story. You need to draft that talent, because trading for it is always in the twilight years.

Noooo, no, no, no no... The problem with Sutter is his influence in player acquisition and development. You keep that bafoon out of any office. He belongs on a farm.

No thats why you need a strong GM. Someone who will take advise but still make theor own decisions. Firing him looks really baf since we just signed him to an extension though

Ken king was great, but Sutter isn't a people person, nor is he one to not add his bias to a decision. I don't think it's a matter of the GM being strong, but his boss being fair and open minded.

I think you misunderstood that point of PoHO here. They don't need to be a people person. They aren't the one dealing with players outside of contract negotiations. They deal with team economics and ownership mainly

You think Sutter can handle economics? It's my profession, and I can tell you he has never done anything to indicated he cares about the economics of a team, much less understands it.

I met Burke and King on a few occasions, and they were business men with a knack for how the league operated. Both were involved in arena discussions, advertising, courting partnerships, and the long term financial position of the club. Sutter was a god awful GM. I don't see how that translates to being the GM's boss. If anything he should be retired and farming. Even if he took the role as "special advisor" to the GM, it would be a drag to the organization. Sutter has a clear bias towards players that fit his mold, and they aren't players you build a team around. There is no way the partitions created between roles wouldn't bleed into hockey development. He's strong willed and hard headed. Those are decent qualities for a coach, terrible qualities for upper management.