the matthews line has been good at times, but more often than not they are invisible until they score. Got totally dominated vs the bergeron line. I love johnssons game but would not call him a first line player
It's working 5v5 by every available metric, every line we've got gets curb stomped by the Bergeron line, including Matthews Marner being paired up
Johnsson is performing, it's working so I couldn't care less
Pretty much my stance on Hyman with the Tavares line
The AJ - Matthews - Willy has been good when playing against 2nd tier competition. That's fine if you can stomach 22m for a good to great 2nd line.
For this to happen we need Hyman - JT - Marner back up and running as our top line.
I'm not convinced Matty- Willy are ready for consistent top line duties.
I would say Soupy would a great option to try to see how the combos go. I think AJ is working hard (sometimes too hard) and he's struggling a bit with the new role.
Soupy brings some unique 200 ft skills that could help the top line more than AJ at this point. He's a better transporter the puck from our zone, wins more puck battles and can generally be more disruptive in most situations.
Mikheyev has been on the 3rd line, Kapanen looks great on the 3rd line as well and we all know how it went on the first line
The Tavares line with Hyman works, the Matthews line with Nylander and Johnsson works, the Kerfoot Mikheyev Kapanen line looks good
We shouldn't be looking to reinvent the wheel here, if it works stick with it and don't make changes for the sake of it
Also Matthews and Marner look awful together, they just don't mesh for some reason and I'm not keen on trying to force something that screws up our top 6 lines and combinations
Yep. Lol that line has bee stellar at 5v5 (whcih is why Babcock uses them more at even strength this year than the Marner/JT line)
I don't understand why were messing with something that works either