Projected Habs lineup:
Cole Caufield | Nick Suzuki | Kirby Dach |
Alex Newhook | Jake Evans | Juraj Slafkovsky |
Brendan Gallagher | Christian Dvorak | Josh Anderson |
Emil Heineman | Oliver Kapanen | Joel Armia |
Mike Matheson | Kaiden Guhle |
Lane Hutson | David Savard |
Arber Xhekaj | Jayden Struble |
I’m at a loss on what to say about the second to fourth lines.
Jake Evans as a number two center??!!! Whooof.
Putting our number one overall draft pick on the second line so that we can continue trying to boost the corpse of Kirby Dach into being productive?
That third line has more holes than a sieve.
And instead of dressing some grit on the fourth line, we’ve got two rookies and a warm body. Lomberg is going to be taking some healthy runs at those two kids.
At least Xhekaj is in the lineup I guess.
If it were me, I’d have Newhook and Armia watch the game from the stands, send Kapanen back to the SHL, insert Pezz into the lineup and call up Beck and Davidson for the game.
My lines would look like:
Caufield - Suzuki - Davidson
Slafkovsky - Beck - Dach
Gallagher - Evans - Anderson
Pezzetta - Dvorak - Heineman
Hutson - Guhle
Matheson - Struble
Xhekaj - Savard
Spread the talent out between the top two lines, add some grit and speed from the AHL guys and insulate them with some veterans, add some toughness for the fourth line and balance our size/speed/talent a little more on the back end.