Neighbors has 10 goals; give him a real center!

Not gonna be overcritical of Bannister on day one but I really don't like these lines. Buch-Thomas-Neighbours works well and allows Kyrou to be the primary puck carrier (if he'd get his head out of his rear) on the other scoring line. I've never liked Buch-Thomas-Kyrou. Even if it works, it leaves the other lines high and dry. Also nothing against Toropchenko but he's a 4th liner - been his profile ever since junior and he's good at it. Not sure why the Blues keep trying to juice him up on the 3rd line, especially when a guy like Alexandrov or Sunny fits the role a lot better imo. Defense is just gonna be bad no matter how you try to pair these guys up but Perunovich at least provides some offense versus Tucker who provides nothing (unless he's gonna drop the gloves).

I think we’ve ran these lines before and it didn’t work then.

It’ll probably work tonight given we’re playing Ottawa. But against most teams we have no secondary scoring this way and then if the top line gets one or two we’re still losing.

Thought
Neighbors - Thomas - Buch
Schenn - Hayes - Kyrou
Saad - Sunny - Kap
Torpo - Alexandrov - Blais

Has been the best we’ve ran lines so far.

Im more interested in whether or not we’re still going to deploy the defense the same way. If not 72-47 is going to get caved in without getting a cake walk of deployment.

Not sure why he took Jakey off the RobTom line, not jazzed about Tucker. But I just want all I ever want: good decisions with the puck.

The way we've been matching up our D pairs this season has been utter madness.

It’s been the last 2 years. It worked one year because our offense was so strong that we could outscore most teams.

I HATE the pairing of 47 and 72. I don’t love either player individually. But having both of them out there leads to 2-3 massive defensive gaffes a game. The sad part about that is it’s normally against 3rd or 4th liners.

We weren't matching like this last season, where Parayko gets 3rd and 4th liners against top lines while Krug and Faulk get RobTom's line. But it's not even that. Stuff like putting Tucker and Scandella out right after we allow a goal. Using Krug and Leddy in regular PK shifts. We didn't that last season, either. It's a mess.

I did notice Krug getting more PK time this year. I don’t think you can say Krug doesn’t give everything he’s got. But he is just too physically challenged to do heavy lifting or hardly any lifting in the d zone

Krug's compete level should never be in question. It's all the damn mistakes. So many mistakes.