Each week (ish), we’ll pose a new question to our team about whatever’s going on with the other team. First up? A look at Coach Carbery’s new-look lines.
Q: What are your thoughts on Spencer Carbery’s first major line shakeup?
Andrew: I like the shake up. Having a 35+ top line does not feel like a recipe for success. Even for the sake of nostalgia it seems like a bad idea. I like the mix of youth with veterans. Let Dylan Strome and Tom Wilson create and dig out pucks from the corner to set up Alex Ovechkin. What line players are on does not necessarily dictate how much ice time they are getting either. I am curious to see what Connor McMichael on a Evgeny Kuznetsov and T.J. Oshie line looks like. Oshie can be a trigger man for both Kuzy and McMike and his tenacity in the corners could help set up high danger chances for the other two.
No Nic Dowd for a game is manageable, but the Capitals need him as the rock on the fourth line. If you’re looking for Anthony Mantha to produce the fourth line is probably not the place to put him, but you for sure don’t want McMichael on the fourth line. I don’t know the last time Mantha played in the top six but I agree that if he is going to get his game back, he at least needs time there to find it. The defensive shake up is interesting, is it a bit early for a maintenance day for John Carlson? I genuinely don’t know, but maybe he does need it. The first pair Rasmus Sandin and Alex Alexeyev is interesting to me. Do they get caved in? Do they start the rush by making great break out passes and then join the rush? Who knows but it will be wild to watch. I hope Charlie Lindgren is healthy soon. The Capitals have their first back to back on Oct. 24th and 25th with another game on the 27th. The only away game is in New Jersey but it’s three games in four days and the Capitals will need someone else to take a start.
Luke: I love it. Or I should at least say I love it more than the last lineup. I was not a fan of the original first line at all, way too slow. Splitting up the 3 slowest players (Ovi, Backy, Oshie) across three lines is really smart. We know Ovechkin-Strome worked out really well last season. They were dynamite offensively and not crazy bad defensively, which is all you can ask for when Ovi is out there. We also know Milano and Backstrom did really well last season at both ends of the ice. With Backstrom healthy and throwing in Phillips, that line could really cook. Sandwiching Kuznetsov with two two-way players (McMichael and Oshie) that can also shoot should help the Russian’s defensive shortcomings but also have the ability to finish his elite setups. The only thing I don’t like is Mantha should be playing. No matter what you think about him, he’s at the very least, better than Beck Malenstyn, so if you have Mantha, you might as well play him. Maybe he will play but my guess is that he’s just a placeholder while Nic Dowd is out with injury. Either way, I’ll take the Mantha sacrifice to ice this much better, even lineup in terms of speed, skill and defensive ability.
J.P.: Deck chairs, Titanic, etc. But seriously, Ovechkin and Backstrom haven’t worked together at 5v5 in ages. Here (via NatStatTrick) is what it’s looked like on-ice over the last three years:
And if you want a more frightening look (this being Spooky Season and all), here’s last year, via HockeyViz:
Obviously those sample sizes are small(ish), but they certainly don’t make me want to see more. And while I’m hopeful that Coach Carbery can fix a lot of what has ailed this team in recent years, I wouldn’t expect him to invent a time machine to bring us back to 2009.
Once you split those two, everything sorta falls into place. Mantha is still a wild card (we hope?), but these trios look better, on paper, than the ones that started the season, and it’s literally because of that one line (and even one pair within it).