I always enjoy Porty and AlisonL on the
front & nationwide podcast.
Porty joins in the skepticism about Panarin's neck injury, says he doesn't think the neck would get hurt doing pullups. I have to correct this - for me it's the main reason to be wary about pullups. It's very easy to pull a neck muscle doing them. Your trap muscles are the main muscles that do pullups.
Most of the episode is about the PP, and problems finding a fit at each position. Larsen mentions our lack of a dominant center, mentioning Scheifele and Oshie. To me this is very obviously about the central powerplay position ("the Gagner spot"), but Porty gets confused and thinks it's about the faceoff men. Oshie and Scheifele are great in the central position because they can get a shot off instantly with zero extra space, and can win battles for loose pucks. We need a guy who can do both of those things.
I think Dubois should be tried there. He's got the strength at least, a great shot, I'm not sure if he can do it with so little space though. The Washington/Winnipeg model is to have two same-handed snipers, one in the middle and one on the left half-wall (Oshie + Ovechkin, Scheifele + Laine), across from a great distributor on the right half-wall (Backstrom, Wheeler). Panarin can be the great far guy, Dubois maybe in the middle. But he's a left-shot, so that spoils that plan. And do we want to put Wennberg back in his old spot, where he struggled last year?
This is what I'd like to see tried:
----------Wennberg
Panarin - Dubois - Werenski
------------Jones
It gives Panarin multiple left-shot options across from him, and of course he can shoot. Apologies to Cam Atkinson, but having a right-shot guy on the right half-wall is not ideal, it's not a great shooting position and it makes it harder to set guys up for one-timers. Werenski can shoot better from that side, and he's a better passer in any position. That gives Nutivaara full command of the second unit, which he's overdue for.
---------------Foligno
Atkinson - Bjorkstrand - Milano
--------------Nutivaara