With big roster moves likely done, what do you predict next year’s line combinations to be?
First of all, I think lines are going to change a lot early in the season. But I’ll throw these out anyway…
Razor - Larkin - ADB
Fabbri - Compher - Perron
Sprong - Copp - Berggren
Fischer - Ras - Kostin
Veleno/Kasper
Seider - Walman
Ghost - Holl
Maatta - Chiarot
Lindstrom/(Edvinsson)
Husso
Lyon/Reimer (pick 'em, but I’d rather run with Lyon)
I could see several combinations of the first line. I don’t prefer Perron there but guessing Lalonde will give it a shot, too. Guessing the top 6 should end up modestly stable, though, since they’ll probably all spend a lot of time on the PP and we may want to come back with a tough line thereafter to combat a team fresh off a kill. Likewise for Copp/Fischer/Ras/Kostin on the PK, though, we may get some Larkin time there, too, situationally. I really liked how we we deploying regular linemates on the PK a bit last year (larks/razor, e.g.), but it didn’t stick. While it worked for chemistry, surely we’d rather save guys like that for ES and PP time.
Defensively could be hard to say. A chiarot-Holl pair gives me some pause, but I really like the idea of Ghost and Maatta, so hopefully we get to see that at points. But we got a lot of Maatta-Chiarot to close out last year so guessing we see a bit more of it. Seider-Walman seems like it’s theirs to lose and only may get disrupted depending on how the PP plays out, since seider, Walman, Ghost all likely spending some time there.
I think that Kostin and Ras and Mazur are going to make it as large body wingers opposite the smaller wingers like Raymond, Berggren and DeBrincat. I have no clue about how the pairings will shake out.
DeBrincat - Larkin - Perron
Fabbri - Compher - Raymond
Rasmussen - Copp - Fischer
Kostin - Veleno - Sprong
Walman - Seider
Chiarot - Holl
Määttä - Gostisbehere
Husso
Reimer
Raymond on the second line is a good call, he really needs to earn the top line after last year.
