Line Combos: CBJ Roster Discussion/Line Combos/Injury Report

[stevo61]

Well, Werenski is one of the best defenseman in the league handling the puck, and plenty of people have issues with Mateychuk playing on the top pairing as is, let alone having to do it on his off side.

Why do people think Werenski couldn’t play on the right side??

Provorov and Christiansen can play RD? Severson LD? And Werenski can’t?

it's not a matter of can and can't it's a matter of putting people in the best position to succeed

 

[DankoCBJ]

it's not a matter of can and can't it's a matter of putting people in the best position to succeed

Exactly. Monahan can play LW too but he should play C because that is the best position for him to succeed and help our team. Same goes with defencemen when talking about can LD play right side D or not.

 

[Xoggz22]

I still contend that looking at the "defense" as a whole is still impacted by the forwards responsibilities more than just the "D sucks". We still have young forwards. Their initial move is to go forward. The backcheck isn't always aggressive enough. We still run around in our zone a bit. I do think it's better, but the D we do have isn't good enough to overcome all the mistakes and, to me, makes it look worse than it might be.

I think it was this thread, but you can see the disparity between our home and road records and the only difference on the ice is matchups (sure maybe more lively boards in some places). We don't have the matchups up front yet to squelch the opposition chances. And, again, the D itself isn't built or good enough to shut other teams down with the plethora of mistakes we're seeing in the unit of 5 on the ice.

To me, the problem we have is the money invested in guys that are more like 4/5 on most nights but 3/4 on some nights. I don't want two of them and I think we have that in Provorov and Severson. Neither fits the mold that Gudbranson does so dropping them down the lineup isn't necessarily an improvement (I'm ignoring salaries at the moment but they certainly impact the future of this club). I think the biggest miss we're likely to end up seeing is Jiricek. As a 3rd year 6OA pick I think the expectation was he would be playing top 4 by now. Prior to his trade, I think it's questionable if he's a long term NHL player without improvement. That is a very big miss that creates holes in the organization.

Fill the top pair RHD slot to make that pair ferocious on both ends of the ice and I think you can see improvement on the back end. Get more experience with the system and commitment from the forwards and everyone on the back end will improve (or so it will seem). I think Jake is a great 6/7 guy. Same with Gudbranson and JJ. Harris is a 6/7/8 guy and right now Provo and Severson seem more like 4/5 guys and I do like Fabbro but would think he's be a better 2nd pair RD guy (Mateychuk/Fabbro?). The gap is I don't see any real 2/3 guys on this team. Not yet anyway, or not consistently. Going to be a while before we might get that from the young D so maybe that's the off-season plan, that means hard decisions and still unlikely with Severson/Gudbranson and potentially Fabbro/Provorov.

 

[thebus88]

it's not a matter of can and can't it's a matter of putting people in the best position to succeed

Yes.

It seems like everyone is looking to put different people in said best positions however.

 

[Viqsi]

Yes.

It seems like everyone is looking to put different people in said best positions however.

That's kind of the nature of having honest differences of opinion.

 

[DankoCBJ]

When we are talking about our defence. We should be focusing on our TOP4. That seems obvious but it is especially true because Evason likes to play TOP4 defencemen quite heavy minutes.

It should be only a matter of time before Mateychuk takes LD2 spot behind Werenski, right?

Only the right side is up for grabs.

Werenski - RD1
Mateychuk - RD2

The somewhat easy solution would be to keep Fabbro with Werenski and put Severson with Mateychuk since he has that heavy contract with us.

But that would not be great for this team because we want to keep getting better. Allowing less goals than we are allowing right now.

I would keep Fabbro, but to me he would be a number 4 guy on our defence. To me he is a better top4 guy than Severson because he is a little better defensively. Then I would try to get a great fit to play with Werenski on top pair. Use assets to make a trade and fix our defence.

Future top4 D (next year?)

Werenski - X (trade target)
Mateychuk - Fabbro

Severson can either be a third pair luxury piece if we can afford him or we try to trade him away somehow.