Barring a trade, when healthy, these are the forwards I start every night:
Swick. Romano. Miseljevic.
Pridham. Ellinas. Lam.
Grisolia. Mercer. Stark.
Hlacar. Labrash. Vermeulen.
That leaves Bottineau, Arquette, Anstis and Headrick. Not a good place for Bottineau to be.
I shuffle the remaining forwards through the lineup depending on the opponent. I assume Cameron plays mostly at JrB.
Against physical type teams, or high end teams, I make sure older, bigger players dress.
Against the bottom feeder type teams, the kids would slot in.
Among 05 forwards, Grisolia and Mercer are the same type of player but I believe that Grisolia just does it better.
Among 06 forwards, Vermeulen has easily surpassed Bottineau. The coaching staff has been using Vermeulen on the second line with the Stark injury and he’s been fine there. Otherwise, he’d have been dropped out of the top six. He also a fixture on the second PP unit.
Now that Pridham is here, it seems like he’s bumped Vermeulen down the lineup but he still on the second PP unit. That tells me he isn’t going anywhere.
If it comes down to Mercer vs Bottineau, I want to go with Bottineau. He’s bigger, more physical, and a year younger. But what throws a wrench into that thinking is that Mercer is a center and Bottineau is a winger. We have an abundance of wingers. Not a lot of centers. Mercer is very good on the PK. And he’s right behind Ellinas on faceoff win percentage. That means on the PK, he’s the center I want to start on every PK.
With all the above in mind, I’m finding a home for Bottineau somewhere around the league.
As far as the kids go, Headrick is still a long way from returning. For me, I find a spot for him to play big minutes on a JrB team. It’ll be hard to expect him to join the team in, say, February and contribute. I don’t see where he’d get much ice time under those circumstances. Let him play JrB locally. He still practices with the big team, and we get him into the odd game.
If/when we move Swick and/or Miseljevic, the kids come into the lineup.
