BruinDust
Registered User
- Aug 2, 2005
- 24,647
- 22,476
Glad Sweeney finally woke up from his coma and called up skills from Providence with Cehlarik.
In one game, he has 1 more goal than Acciari has all year. 40% of Kuraly, Wagner or Nordstrom.
Too many no hands grinders on this team. Calling up Cehlarik is a start and Acciari is sitting tonight. Team improved with this callup.
Ice time it took Cehlarik to score his last 2 NHL goals = 18 mins.
Ice time it took Acciari to score his last 2 NHL goals = 561 mins.
This is why I get mad when I see teams hell bent on icing a "traditional" or "energy" 4th line. You end up demoting better players at the expense of these grinders.
People can talk about hits, and energy, and momentum, and whatever. Bottom line, the game is about putting more pucks past the opponent's netminder and preventing the opposing team from putting pucks past yours.
So unless that 4th line grinder is preventing massive amount of goals from being scored on their own net, are they really helping win that many hockey games if they aren't generating some level of offensive production?
I don't mind having a grinder or two on the 4th line. I'm not advocating to go 100% speed and skill and youth on the 4th line.
I just don't get why it HAS to be three of them, ALL the time, and there is very little flexibility there. We've seen coaches fiddle with their scoring lines just to keep a particular 4th line together. If I'm a coach, the last line I'm worried about keeping as a permanent unit would be the line I use the least. Seems logical but that's not what happens.