Barzal on a fourth line seems kind of pointless to me.

I was thinking it would be more like 2 3rd lines (if that’s even a thing with this much talent)

In fairness, barzal on this team seems pointless to me. However in a bottom six role i just see no case to be made for it. Barzal needs to be playing a lot, and in offensive situations.

What’s he doing here? Taking defensive face offs? Penalty killing? Being an energy line. If we’re talking fourth line center for team canada, i don’t think i would have him in the top 30 candidates. You really want a guy that’s one of the worst face off men in the league playing this role? Put ROR up there. He’s a better player anyway, and can actually play in that capacity.

Trotz has taught Barzal to be more of a two-way player. With that in mind, I can assume the guy who made this expects Barzal to be able to handle a bottom 6 spot on team Canada, but who knows.

Barzal>ROR. That fourth line won’t be bad in it’s one zone either and the 2nd and third kind can handle the majority of defensive zone starts and such. I’d rather have a skilled fourth line if I have two lines that will be excellent in their own zone ahead of them.

I just don’t even know how to respond to that. Up is down.

Yeah we clearly have differing opinions here on what we want.

What I think is that if you have 2 very good lines defensively already, you don’t need your fourth line to be amazing defensively, it can simple be adequate. Though I think barzal (aside from faceoffs) is much better than you are implying.

I also think Barzal is better than ROR. As I said with an argument regarding scheifele vs ROR, barzal is simply more dynamic. The one issue I have is maybe he’s not ready defensively that would possibly put ROR ahead of him. In that case, of course I’d rather have ROR in this lineup. But I think barzal is good enough defensively to handle the role

Honestly i don’t even think hockey canada has more than a 2 minute conversation about barzal. Then they cross him off the list with a dozen other centers ahead of him.