After a long hiatus with more of the regular conversation happening more spontaneously in any and all articles, Canes and Coffee will reach back to its roots with (hopefully) regular Monday and Thursday ‘The Coffee Shop’ posts featuring polls and discussions centered around a timely Canes topic.
Today’s first 2021 topic reopens The Coffee Shop for debate and discussion the 2020-21 Carolina Hurricanes forward lines.
Mostly out of simplicity for making workable polls without a gazillion combinations, the starting assumption (at least for the polls) is that Aho, Trocheck, Staal and Geekie will each center a line which means picking two wings for each center.
Carolina Hurricanes hockey polls
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Coffee Shop questions
1) For those willing to share, please include your forward lines here with a few reasons for your choices.
2) When building your lines, what are are your primary reasons/strategies? …Trying to build the best lines possible? Aiming for offense/defense balance? Finding complementary players? Or…?
3) For how you put you put your lines together, which 1-2 players will be most important for them being successful?
Go Canes!
It’s easy to say Svech/Aho/TT, but the team needs 2 top scoring lines in order to be elite and to go deep in postseason. I think the most important thing is keeping Aho with Turbo. Svech-Trocheck-Necas could be a second scoring line.
Canes would be SO much better if one of Nino or Dzingel are scoring points. Nino should get first shot to find chemistry with Aho-TT. I’m skeptical on Dzingel, but he’s in a contract year, so he will be motivated.
I’m also curious about Necas or Fast with Aho-TT. Fast isn’t a point producer, but he’s disruptive, fast, and has history playing on top scoring lines.
4) I wanted to bring up something that wasn’t asked.
When the Checkers won the Calder Cup they predominantly used something of a hybrid center. Necas took the offensive role as the primary puck carrier and set up the offensive attack. Then Brown (I think Bishop might have played with Necas a little as well) would handle most of the defensive responsibility. I understand that hockey is a fluid game. But so is basketball where roles have become much less traditional. Given Necas’ obvious offensive superiority to any other options, is there a good reason other than tradition not to try a hybrid role or even a line with three centers who adjust on the fly? I know it sounds unserious, but so did infield shifts or five receiver sets not that long ago.
I had Nino as my 13F – I think his norm is rather sorry. On the flip side I think Dzingel has shown that he can play for D-T-N and S-A-T should both be scoring lines. We don’t have enough depth scorers to put a scorer on Geekie’s wing so he will be dragged down by Martinook and Foegele. But if Staal continues his decline perhaps Geekie gets more time and finds some offensive chemistry with someone else in a 3rd line (defined by TOI).
my lines arent concrete but here is my strategy….
If Nino and Dzingel come in and look like top 6 wingers again, I play them with Trocheck. I use Necas on the 4th line but…… he gets a bunch of PP time and gets time on the 2nd or 3rd line during offensive draws. Ensuring that he still gets 15+ minutes a night. If one of them dont look like a top 6 winger then I out Necas permanently on the 2C. I put the lesser of Nino or Dzingel on the 4th line.
SAT- was one of hte best top lines in the league. Keep them together
Foegele-Staal-Fast= has to be one of the best shutdown lines in the league.
I sit one of McGinn, Martinook, or Geekie to have another offensively capable winger in Necas, Dzingel, or Nino on the 4th line. We will have the 3rd line plus 2 of Geekie/Marty/McGinn to play solid defense / PK (Aho and Turbo are pretty good too). I dont see the benefit to playing 2 defensive lines. Adding a 7th forward capable of scoring is important.