So, first, some stats (from corsica):
In 2016-17, there were 35 forward lines leaguewide who spent more than 300 minutes of 5v5 time on the ice together.
Matthias-Lowry-Armia 368 minutes, compared to those 35 lines:
48.55 CF% (30th; best: Pearson-Carter-Toffoli, worst: Grabner-Miller-Hayes)
-1.97 RelCF% (29th; best/worst same as CF%)
44.83 GF% (34th; best: Johansson-Kuznetsov-Williams, worst: Raffl-Giroux-Voracek)
-4.19 RelGF% (34th; best: Hall-Zajac-Palmieri, worst: Lucic-RNH-Eberle)
2.12 GF/60 (27th; best: Hyman-Matthews-Brown, worst: Nordstrom-McClement-Stalberg)
In other words, that line sucked badly. You have MLA as a third line and Thorburn on the fourth and your depth scoring is a huge problem. It was quite infuriating to see PauMau trying to make it work even in garbage time when he could have experimented with other players (Connor, Roslovic, Dano, Petan). At the (rough) beginning of this season, when Connor was sent down, some of us were complaining about "two fourth lines". I was very disappointed when MLA was sent out for the first game, and I was very happy it only lasted one game.
Same exercise for Copp-Lowry-Tanev (313 minutes), compared to the 44 >300 minute lines of 2017-18:
60.39 CF% (1st; worst: Nieto-Soderberg-Comeau)
+7.96 RelCF% (6th; best: Panarin-Dubois-Anderson, worst: Marleau-Kadri-Komarov)
66.67 GF% (8th; best: Ritchie-Henrique-Kase, worst: Cousins-Richardson-Martinook)
+14.91 RelGF% (13th; best: Nyquist-Zetterberg-Manta, worst: Cousins-Richardson-Martinook)
2.68 GF/60 (29th; best: Bjugstad-Barkov-Dadonov, worst: Kuraly-Schaller-Acciari)
That line was actually pretty good and it produced results that most teams would be happy to get from their top line. It's obviously unlikely that they can sustain those elite numbers, but it's not farfetched to think they can be decent.
tl;dr: CLT is nothing like MLA because CLT was great and MLA was garbage.
Evidence that PauMau isn't completely married to the CLT line: they only played one game against Vegas together (game 4). Note though that in the other games, it was always Armia who replaced either Copp or Tanev on that line, and Armia is gone now.
In my opinion, it comes down to who's the fourth guy to play center after Scheifele, Little, and Lowry.
- Wheeler: I have a hard time seeing PauMau splitting Scheifele and Wheeler so I'm confident he won't play center. I also really hope he'll never play center again.
- Perreault: the days of Center Perreault are gone for good.
- Petan: Lots of different scenarios what could happen with him, but the one in which he plays #4C is pretty unlikely in my opinion.
- there could be a Hendricks-type August veteran signing (Letestu? Moore?), but it hasn't happened yet.
So I think it's safe to say that it probably comes down to Copp vs Roslovic. The reasons why everybody has CLT as a line in their projected lineup are 1) they were really good together and 2) most people who write projected lineups are fans of the team and as such they want to see Roslovic succeed as a center and become the eventual #2C.
Of course, PauMau might not want play Roslovic at center, we'll see what he does. I think it's safe to say Roslovic will play some games at center next season, but maybe he won't start there, or maybe he will be moved back to wing if he doesn't get good results. And in that case, Copp is probably the backup option, which would spell the end of CLT.
In both cases it will be interesting if PauMau runs a 8-10 minutes fourth line that's clearly behind Lowry and Little (like when we had Scheifele-Little-Lowry-Hendricks), or if he runs four lines and assigns icetime depending on the score (like when we had Scheifele-Stastny/Little/Lowry, and Lowry was used as a second liner when we were up early and as a fourth liner when we were down early).