Just play all three of Thomas, Kyrou, and Thompson the entire season unless they really struggle. This isn't a good team this year, might as well get the kids some experience. One might really take off if given the opportunity and not handled with kid gloves so much. Boeser, Barzal, Keller all averaged around 17:30-18:00 a night. They were obviously all three on bad teams, but the Blues aren't exactly a great team right now either. Give the kids a chance. Vince Dunn, a Dman who had a very strong second half, wasn't even given that much ice time. Thompson was given 10 minutes with plugs and then publicly called out for not scoring goals. Even Robby Fabbri, who had almost an instant impact, was only given 13 minutes a night his rookie year. We know what we have in Sobotka, Berglund, Jaskin etc. and we know it isn't anywhere near good enough. We could probably squeeze into the playoffs running with the veterans, and we likely would miss the playoffs by playing the kids 14-16 minutes a night, but we would be a better team in the long run. We're at a point now where we can give them a longer leash and see how it goes as we're not a competitive team. It would be different if we had Cup aspirations, but clearly by signing stop gaps at every position of need we don't have those aspirations. Our fortunes hang on whether the kids can have an instant impact and produce at a second line level. We've been hoarding them and making them unavailable in trade(which I think is the right decision for the most part), it's time to see what they can do. Give them a REAL chance to make an impact. Not 8 minutes on a line with Jaskin and Thorburn.
EDIT TO ADD:
Schwartz-Schenn-Kyrou
Steen-Bozak-Tarasenko
Fabbri-Thomas-Thompson
Soshnikov-Barbashev-Jaskin
Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko
Steen-Bozak-Perron
Sobotka-Thomas-Jaskin
Soshnikov-Barbashev-Thorburn
Top one is obviously fairy tale land that won't happen without a couple of injuries. It's an extremely talented group who would likely make a lot of mistakes, especially early on. Bottom one is boring, slow, safe, run of the mill nothingness that will lead finishing in the bottom half of the league in scoring again but might win some more games 2-1.
