Yeah, I rather move Brassard to wing.
Also, lets make one thing clear, in an ideal world AV wants two scoring lines, a shutdown line and a energy line. Alright. In Vancouver he had two players who in recent years has won Art Ross Trophies, Hart, Lester Patricks etc. on his top line. They always delivered. Looking at ice time, AV also for long periods did not play his "2nd line" much. Kessler played alot, but he PKd and PPd, the other wingers on the second line often played less 5 on 5 than forwards on the 3rd and sometimes even 4th line. But he had that awesome 1st line and could build a game around them.
I've heard many coaches before say that they want to go a little more 2/2 then spreading out the talent which is the norm today.
But, the minute those two first lines don't deliver, you have a 3rd line just trying to kill of time and a 4th line that in that situation really don't serve a purpose -- any coach will try to experiment. Can one of the "skilled" players on a scoring line come to his right with more support from the 2-way players on the 3rd line? And so forth.
I would definitely like to state that I am sceptical that AV can frontload the team with more or less "all" talent on the top 2 lines and then have a 3rd line to kill time/get up ice. Because if those 2 lines does not deliver and does not provide you with momentum, and the 3rd just is supposed to kill time, you get zero momentum. We have found ourself in that situation on two occasions at least with Renney and on two occasions with John Tortorella. Under Renney for example, we as a team looked like sheit Drury and Gomez first years here (X-Gomez-JJ, X-Drury-Shanahan with the 3rd and 4th being pretty typcal shut down/energe lines): and it wasn't until Dubinsky came in and centered Jagr (with Avery) and Drury ended up on a 3rd line (Straka-Drury-Callahan) that was pretty decent and Betts was bumped back to the 4th line that we started to play well. That year we played extremely well in the second half of the season (we were the best team in the league G43-G82 if I remember correctly), but just ran into a very strong Pittsburgh team in the PO's. Torts also had exactly that problem last year for example, until Mitchell and Hagelin was brought up, and gave us depth so that we got 2-way third and forth lines.
I can guarantee this, if we can't put togehter two strong lines, or atleast one that is very dominant, AV will -- not -- just ice a shut down 3rd line because that would make our team really weak. In fact, the biggest strength we have as a team, besides Hank, is our depth. We are not going to utilize that?
