Why wouldn't they have Lias rejoin Byfield on the 3rd line and hope they rekindle some of that preseason magic.....put Grundy on the 4th line.
Because Todd said today
"that all drafted players are equal" and start at the bottom, essentially. Except maybe a handful, like McChrist, Matthews and Eichel. So, Lias, Arty, etc, must first master line 4...before moving up. If Kopitar started this way, he would have gone back to Sweden, after
his first year here. Toffoli would have never made it...he would have died on line 4.
I guess QB is special and plays line 3 with Brown. (but gets no PP time. He must earn that, somehow)
McLellan on “Graduation”
Lastly, Todd McLellan talked about the process of “graduation” as he put it, when asked about the transition for players like Lias Andersson or Jaret Anderson-Dolan in coming up to the NHL, where they play in the bottom six, versus the AHL, where they play top-six minutes with power-play time. His answer was in-depth, meriting using the quote in full. –
“They shouldn’t be playing a different role in the American League, they should be penalty killing and they should b edoing the things that they need to do to be successful here as well. The icing on the cake for them is that they get to play on the power play at the American League level, but that’s called graduation. That happens in San Jose, that happens in Anaheim, that happens in LA, and it starts at the draft.
Everybody gets drafted as the top scorer in the league, the most valuable player,
but they don’t come in and begin as the number-one center, it just doesn’t happen. Some individuals are close to that, Connor [McDavid], Auston Matthews, maybe Jack Eichel in his year, but most of them have to work their way up, so there has to be some other skillset that they bring to get into the lineup. JAD, Lias, the others you talked about, they do have that and that’s one of their strengths. They can check, they can play well. This team we’re playing today, with Bonino’s line, they all entered the league as very good offensive players and they’re all still in the league because they play good roles. There’s a lesson in that for everybody in the game.”
