The Official 2026 Off-Season Thread: Revenge of the Nerds
- Thread starter MindzEye
- Start date
Preston
MBow30 alt account
McKenna - Matthews - Roslovic
Cowan - Tavares - Nylander
Knies - Paul - Joshua
Lorentz - Sissons - Bluegar
Duhaime
This is how I'd line them up but I'm guessing Joshua and Lorentz will be gone. I don't hate the 3rd line if Paul isn't completely dead. The way Tampa deployed Paul last year, they never really believed he was a 3C. He was given 4C duty or spot duty to fill in for injuries in the top 9 on the wing, which didn't go particularly well all year. But... If you're betting on Nick Paul and believe missing training camp caused his steep decline, you probably want to give him a shot as the 3C to start. And if he's capable, Knies and Joshua are good enough offensively to give that line a little juice. They'd be looking pretty stacked if they signed an Arvidsson type tho, so I still feel that was a missed opportunity, even if he replaces Joshua in that lineup.
I think with a fully healthy lineup being incredibly rare, and the huge amount of 4th line players they have, I sort of expect the bottom 2 lines to be deployed fairly equally in terms of icetime. 4a and 4b type lines in the end. I'm sure they'll have specific roles and stuff; main risk is that they're too plugish to really give them that extreme deployment that we expect them to get. Like do we really want a line with Colton Sissons and Duhaime/Bluegar to get dzone starts against McDavid? David Kampf all over again.
Cowan - Tavares - Nylander
Knies - Paul - Joshua
Lorentz - Sissons - Bluegar
Duhaime
This is how I'd line them up but I'm guessing Joshua and Lorentz will be gone. I don't hate the 3rd line if Paul isn't completely dead. The way Tampa deployed Paul last year, they never really believed he was a 3C. He was given 4C duty or spot duty to fill in for injuries in the top 9 on the wing, which didn't go particularly well all year. But... If you're betting on Nick Paul and believe missing training camp caused his steep decline, you probably want to give him a shot as the 3C to start. And if he's capable, Knies and Joshua are good enough offensively to give that line a little juice. They'd be looking pretty stacked if they signed an Arvidsson type tho, so I still feel that was a missed opportunity, even if he replaces Joshua in that lineup.
I think with a fully healthy lineup being incredibly rare, and the huge amount of 4th line players they have, I sort of expect the bottom 2 lines to be deployed fairly equally in terms of icetime. 4a and 4b type lines in the end. I'm sure they'll have specific roles and stuff; main risk is that they're too plugish to really give them that extreme deployment that we expect them to get. Like do we really want a line with Colton Sissons and Duhaime/Bluegar to get dzone starts against McDavid? David Kampf all over again.
hockeylover
Well-known member
I think one more higher end add on Wednesday would've made the whole picture look a bit better.
There's still an opportunity to do that but it's disappointing to have so much money and blow it all on Day 1 on low end players.
If it was the case that they didn't want to go 3 years on some of the more talented guys, I think that's fine, but I probably would've stayed out of the fray a little more and looked for some value/higher upside later.
This has sorta always been what a bunch of us asked for in free agency for the last decade, nothing new really. Mehta's comments about making bets on upside is just a more appealing philosophy to me.
But hey, we've certainly been wrong many times. Hope Chundin shuts me the fuck up, Bob is incredible, Nick Paul is the Nick Paul of old, etc.
There's still an opportunity to do that but it's disappointing to have so much money and blow it all on Day 1 on low end players.
If it was the case that they didn't want to go 3 years on some of the more talented guys, I think that's fine, but I probably would've stayed out of the fray a little more and looked for some value/higher upside later.
This has sorta always been what a bunch of us asked for in free agency for the last decade, nothing new really. Mehta's comments about making bets on upside is just a more appealing philosophy to me.
But hey, we've certainly been wrong many times. Hope Chundin shuts me the fuck up, Bob is incredible, Nick Paul is the Nick Paul of old, etc.