The main advantage of Kane is another talented body to help spread out the offence. Putting him with McDavid and Drai squanders that advantage with a nuclear option and a bunch of meh.

I'd personally go something like:

Kane-McDavid-Foegele
Hyman-Draisaitl-Puljujarvi
Holloway-Nuge-Yamamoto
McLeod-Ryan-Kassian

the only problem I have is the third line. When they had that line but, instead of Holloway it is Hyman and that line was not producing except for Hyman. I'd personally put Holloway with Draisaitl because they can really use some playmaking to replace Nuge on the second line

Why is it a bunch of meh? The Hyman-McLeod-Puljujarvi line did extremely well against Toronto.
RNH and Yamamoto have good chemistry, and adding a fast, tenacious player in Holloway would only compliment them. Plus they'd face much easier competition.

I'd be hesitant to force Holloway into a top 6 role. Putting him on a sheltered 3rd line with skill is the best thing for him. At least in the short term.

..

Good point

Good lines.

My thoughts on Holloway is to start him in the bottom 6 and make him play his way up the line-up. The lines with Drai/McDavid will take their top players most of the night giving Holloway favourable match-ups to get used to the NHL game. Like what I've seen so far and he could warrant a spot up the line-up sooner than later, just there's way more expectations in terms of production with McDavid/Draisaitl and playing away from them will help manage expectations for a rookie.



Hyman-McLeod-Puljujarvi is a really good checking line. All big bodies that skate well and have good defensive positioning. Just no real offensive driver out of the 3 of them. They'd defend well, I'd just expect 3rd line type scoring rates.

I like the Holloway-Nuge-Yamamoto combo as well but it's another line that's best off as a 3rd.

By loading up McDrai, you end up not having a true 2nd line and again end up riding them too hard and have too much expectation on your 1st line. I'd rather spread out the talent.

I like the idea of having Holloway come in and try at 3c between foegele and kass. Similar to the start of the year when Ryan played there and were great just holloway has more speed and skill to work with plus he’s known to be good at draws.

One consideration is probably still keeping Ryan as a 4C to have one RHC for face-offs in the line-up.

McLeod is a better center than Nuge and Ryan though, Holloway may be too. Not sure that's the best possible lineup, but it looks a lot better than the injury-riddled crew they've been putting out for the past 2 months for sure.

I think something like this is close to ideal:

Kane - McDavid - Puljujarvi
Nugent-Hopkins - Draisaitl - Hyman
Foegele - Holloway - Yamamoto
Benson - McLeod - Kassian

Their numbers suggest they're more than just a checking 3rd line. I know this is a small sample size, which I mentioned in the description, but I still think they deserve more credit with these numbers against a good Leafs team:

CF%: 65.52
xGF%: 54.61
SCF%: 77.78 (!!)
HDCF%: 66.67

Thats with a a PDO of 0.911 as well, which you would expect to improve a little bit. If I'm getting that kind of production from a line, and my other two lines in the top 9 are Drai-McD- Kane and Holloway-RNH-Yamo, I am taking that all day.

Edit: from Natural Stattrick

I still think that is a bit too much pressure on Holloway, at least to start. Playing 3C in the NHL is not easy. I think long term he will be a winger for this team anyway.

I can see him starting at LW, but I don't see him there long term. You don't take one of the most dominant ever D+1 centers out of NCAA and turn him into a winger for a team dying for center depth. That's just silly.

So you see him as the long term 3C?

I think he'll be the best 3C in the league in 2-3 years.