I think our best line combinations will be:
Chabot - Zub
Sandy - Chychrun
Branny - Hamonic
I think Chychrun is in the mold of the exact player we want sanderson to become and there will be no better player for him to learn his game from. Also could see some crazy chemistry between these two.
Per the Coyotes journalist on the PDO Cast episode about Chychrun, he hasn't actually played that much on the right side and didn't look his best on that side. Gostisbehere was the one who switched sides on his pairing, which would make sense because he was more agile than Chychrun.
If the result of this is Sanderson on the 3rd pair... I am not going to like it.
Does your opinion change if Sanderson is playing 23 minutes? 14 on the left side and 9 on the right?
Sergachev averaged about 14 on the left bottom pair and 7 on the right of the top pair for Tampa (those are the proportions, some of his 21 ATOI was obviously spectral teams). I'd suggest a little more for Sanderson because he's better.
I wonder though.....4 rounds of playoff hockey plus 82 regular seaosn games.....that's a lot of icetime.
Perhaps going 20-20-20 might be the best thing in the long run?
Edit to add:
It keeps everyone on their strong side, and it lowers CHabot's icetime. We've seen over and over what happens when Chabot gets overused out there. And we know how amazing he is when he isn't over used. This might solve that problem.
20-20-20 is a waste of talent. We just need Chabot to play under 25.
An Ottawa version of the Tampa model could be 23-23-23 though. With Chychrun-Zub standing in for McDonagh-Cernak who played the hard defensive minutes.*
Chabot - x/Sanderson. 23
Chychrun - Zub. 23
Sanderson - x. 14
Edit: this is all normalized for 60 minutes, you can make it more accurate and throw in PP and PK yourself lol.
*Everyone obviously plays best with Zub, maybe Chabot needs him more.