Stepan had played well up to that point. I just think that Winnipeg showed that there a better team in the 3rd period. Good game by Ottawa, Winnipeg is just better

Getting harder and harder for DJ Smith to blame these losses on "young mistakes", considering the average age of skaters was 27, and the best players Tonight were all 21-25 years old.

Stepan needs to wear this one. That penalty would get a Colin White/ Filip Chlapik/ Christian Wolanin benched, and it absolutely cost them this game. It's not entirely on him, but the vets DJ trusts the most ere consistently the guys who are losing winnable games.

The Michael Haley experiment was absolutely pointless. He had a fight that was a waste of time, and did nothing of value the rest of the night. Paquette got hurt at some point, which is honestly a blessing in disguise, as sh*tty as that sounds. Anisimov with another terrible effort, as per usual. Wolanin was one of their best players tonight, but had one notably bad play which will result in him being benched in favor of a 35 year old who makes way more mistakes and has none of the upside.

I think this team will get way better next game if they just swap Arty for White, and keeping Wolaninin the lineup.. Stützle will be back, so you roll with White with Jimmy and Daddy, and you keep Tierney-Stepan-C.Brown together. I liked that line all things considered. Hopefully Chlapik draws in for Paquette too.

Tkachuk-Norris-Batherson
Stützle-White-Dadonov
Tierney-Stepan-C.Brown
Paul-Chlapik-Watson

I really don't feel great about bumping Paul to the 4th line based on how well he's played, but White makes sense as the 2C at this point, and Paul shouldn't be above Timmy. You could try Paul as 2C, and a 4th line of Chlapik-White-Watson, or move Paul to 3LW and have a 4th line of Chlapik-Tierney-Watson. I like any of those options tbh.

agree with pretty much all of this. not sure why wolanin is ever scratched, i thought he was supposed to be our 2LD this year if brannstrom isn’t getting a shot. coburn/reilly can trade 3LD/scratch. honestly don’t know why everyone loves stepan so much, they gave up a 2nd, gave him an A, and he hasn’t been impressive. i like your lines but would keep paul-tierney-c brown as the “3rd” line. stepan can play 4C between watson and galch/chlapik. white needs to be a regular. haley is worse than useless, literally watson or jbrown coulda fought beaulieu and then we wouldn’t have had a wasted roster spot. anisimov is every bit as bad as i feared and deserves to be a regular scratch. we have depth, if guys are playing bad they need to be replaced until something works, we’re somehow getting leads and it’s so annoying when the vets choke them (at least the young guys can blame it on inexperience and might learn something, this is just unacceptable for a vet)

I would also be totally fine with Stepan playing 4C and keeping 13/71/28 together. I just think Tierney with Chlappie and Watson gives a bit more Offensive punch to the 4th line, which ultimately helps Chlappie make his case to stay in the lineup. Which i desperately want to happen.

If only us capfriendly sens fans ran the team, eh? Would be much better managed and coached haha, hopefully they come to their senses at some point and just embrace the youth. The commentators today were talking about how Josh Norris is getting thrown to the wolves by matching up against Scheifele, the least they could do if that’s happening is slot White/Chlapik into the lineup with much more favourable matchups

I haven’t read all the comments yet, but I’ll just say, Stepan had the whole centre of the ice to cut back to, I was surprised he tried to use the glass to dump the puck out. The unfortunate thing is, that seemed to be the entire team mentality by that point, just dump it out, no attack left in a lot of the older guys.

Nice trade