By "love affair with Blackwell" you mean "affinity for playing a good player?" Just because Blackwell is having his first good year at age 28 doesn't mean he's irrelevant. He can easily be a solid player for this team for the next few years. His metrics were very good before the Rangers signed him and they have continued that way. He has 7 more points this year than Glass had in his entire Rangers career. I have no problem at all with him in the top six this year - or next year if the line continues to work. We have already seen Laf/Kakko get plenty of ice time on the top two lines with minimal production. Give them the offseason and training camp next year to work out, get stronger, and improve and then we'll see if they look ready to take on a bigger role.
Right, because winning games right now is ultra important and we need to ride the hot hand of stand-out top liner Colin Blackwell to ensure we make the playoffs.
Like I said it's great he's played half decent and had a handful of good games, but that's where the sentiment stops for me. I would be selling as high as possible on a season like his. The one silver lining is that he's on a league minimum contract.
Blackwell has been a fixture in the top 6: ~1/3rd of his ice time is with Strome and Panarin (160/515 minutes played), a distant 2nd with Strome and Kreider (47/515), then with the players he should be playing with in PDG and Rooney he has a whopping 37 minutes. If the ice time/linemates ever gets swapped then I'm fine with him remaining on the team, but going out of your way to have Blackwell play with Panarin & Co. is just ridiculous when we have the players we have, laying in wait.
Lafreniere has played 638 minutes total. 130 have been with Chytil and Kakko, 100 with Zib and Buch, then a bunch of bullshit 20 minute combos with the other top line guys like Strome and Panarin. He's played more with PDG and Howden than he has with Zib and Panarin (24 minutes vs. 11 minutes). The PDG-Howden-Laf combo has just 4 less minutes than Laf does with Strome and Panarin (24 minutes vs. 28 minutes). Why? Because something about production in those 20 someodd minutes, let's just abandon that all together.
Kravtsov's most common linemates so far are Howden and Rooney by a mile. There's nothing else to say about that.
Chytil's most common linemates are Kakko and Laf. After that..Gauthier and PDG who haven't played since 1972, and Rooney.
Kakko is about the only guy who actually plays with the top line guys.