Little spends most of his shifts trying to dig out pucks for his wingers - both of whom are completely useless along the wall, in the corners, behind or in front of the net.
If I had to, I could go with swapping Ehlers and Conner - at least Conner battles to some extent. This leaves Ehlers and Laine on separate lines with 2 line mates that will work the puck at both ends
This is not true at all. Little is not battling any more or better than his wingers at the moment. Ehlers has at the moment the most of takeaways of those three with 8, and Laine and Little have both 7. They all btw have clearly more of them than Wheeler for example, as he has only 4. But the real battling monster has been this season Scheifele with already 18 takeaways. The second best in the team has been Trouba with 10. Then comes already Ehlers, Laine, Little, Armia and Byfuglien. So ELL has not really been as bad in battles as people seem to think. Even in giveaways Laine (11) has only two more of them than Scheifele (9) and Ehlers (10) one more than Scheifele. Btw, Wheeler has 14 giveaways, so clearly more than Laine or Ehlers. In giveaways Little has been after all surprisingly good with only 1 registered giveaway. I checked all these numbers from NHL.com, so I think they should be pretty valid.
But honestly this might even be part of the problem. As mostly really well playmaking players very rarely have that small amounts of giveaways, as you need to be able to even take enough of relatively well controlled risks with your passes to be able to create good offence. At least too unrisky and conservative play can easily lead into complete offensive stagnation. Could it just be that each player of ELL is just put even too much to focus in to playing defensive hockey? And it has then killed their offence completely. Certainly they lack chemistry together, but is it really after all because of Maurice’s handbrake tactics that ELL is completely lost with their offence?
I have to still point out that I have been watching quite many Jets games even before this season and last season, and have seen Little years ago at his best, and I have to still say that he is definitely not the same player as he used to be. Maybe playing even too much of defence because of Maurice, but even despite that he has clearly lost a step or even two from his prime time. He just can’t do much of anything with the puck because of it. He is defensively responsible, but he can’t also create much of anything offensively, because he can’t beat anyone with his skating at the moment. Hopefully it is about somekind of injury that could be still fixed, and not about him just declining with age. But right now I definitely don’t see him as a number 2. center for a good NHL team. He could be still useful as a 3rd or 4th line center, because he does play defensively responsibly. But with his offence at the moment he just simply should not be playing in the second scoring line.
I’m pretty sure that if Maurice would have the courage to call Roslovic up and put him to the second line instead of Little, it would already make that line much, much better offensively. But Maurice is this very stubborn, rigid and conservative coach, so I guess nothing like this will happen without a bad losing streak or some key injuries.