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31 Takes: Player deployment shouldn't be this hard

Pretty much everyone in sports gets it right when it comes to who plays when.

A look at the minutes leaders in basketball, soccer, and hockey, or plate appearances on any given team — or for the league as a whole — and you’re usually going to get a pretty good read on who the best players on that team or in that sport are. It’s not always 1-to-1, but there’s a reason LeBron James is almost always top-10 in minutes, why Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson play 26 a night, and why most seasons’ plate-appearance leaderboard looks a lot like the top 20 in WAR.

Managers and coaches, generally speaking, know it’s better to run your top dogs out as much as possible. But seems like it’s only hockey coaches who sometimes brain-genius their way into getting it insanely wrong.

Case in point: On Saturday, Paul Maurice assigned Patrik Laine to the fourth line for the game against Toronto, based on the fact that he had only one point at 5-on-5 in 11 games to start the year.

The way to get Patrik Laine to score more isn’t to demote him. (Duane Burleson/AP)
The way to get Patrik Laine to score more isn’t to demote him. (Duane Burleson/AP)

In theory, this could help Laine “learn the game” or however Maurice wanted to justify the bonkers decision to move arguably his biggest offensive weapon away from other elite talents. In theory, Laine would be getting minutes against Toronto’s fourth-liners and maybe that helps shake some offense loose. But uh, how does scaling back his minutes make him or the team as a whole more likely to score? Because he’ll get an extra shift or two against a third pair?

If you want a guy to score more, would it not make more sense to, I don’t know, put him with MORE talented players and give him MORE ice time? Just my thoughts here, but if you’re dealing with an elite goalscorer like Laine (currently shooting 11 percentage points below his career average despite putting the puck on net like 30 percent more per game than he did last year), that seems more logical than trying to get the occasional good matchup on the road.

This isn’t a Maurice galactic-brain move alone. Florida has been moving guys around the lineup liberally of late because no one can score despite the team having good underlying numbers. Inexplicable moves — Troy Brouwer on the second line, both Vince Trochek and Mike Hoffman on the fourth — are being justified in the name of “spreading out the offense.”

In Vegas, too, Jack Adams-winning coach Gerard Gallant has repeatedly promoted Ryan Reaves to the top power play unit to accomplish……… some kind of inscrutable end.

And when Tom Wilson comes back from suspension, you know he’s going back on that top line despite the fact that Kuznetsov and Ovechkin both look pretty damn good so far, and Jakub Vrana is scoring at basically the same rate as Wilson.

Laine’s not going to not-score forever, and if he starts scoring all of a sudden it won’t be because he “learned something” on the fourth line or got something from Jack Roslovic and Brendan Lemieux that he wasn’t getting with two better players.

Just like Brouwer’s not gonna be the reason the Panthers start scoring more and Mike Hoffman doesn’t need a “wakeup call.” And if the Vegas power play comes back to life in the near future, it won’t have been Ryan Reaves giving it CPR. Wilson, I swear to you, isn’t magically going to make two of the best players in hockey more productive because he tries to concuss people.

Let’s put it this way: If Kevin Durant has a couple of bad games, Steve Kerr isn’t gonna give his minutes to Jonas Jerebko so KD can figure it out against, like, the Clippers’ bench.

Hockey coaches could take a lesson from that, but they probably won’t because they can’t be dropped to the coaching fourth line.

31 Takes

Anaheim Ducks: This is one of those things where it’s like, Okay, what’s the catch?”

Arizona Coyotes: That’s….. kind of a big win.

Boston Bruins: The Bruins’ offense isn’t happening; 12 goals in the last six games. It’s an growing problem, but also it’s weird that we’re saying WOW MONTREAL IS SO INCREDIBLE and also THE BRUINS ARE OFF TO A BAD START when they’re half a win apart (6-2-2 versus 6-3-2) and Boston has the game in hand.

Buffalo Sabres: Brutal way to lose, combing back from down 4-2 to drop it early in OT. At least they got the point, I guess.

Calgary Flames: This is gonna shock you but the Flames keep losing games Mike Smith starts. Pretty interesting.

Carolina Hurricanes: I bet you’re really gonna be shocked that Brian Burke is the kind of guy who says Carolina’s win celebration is bad for the sport. He texted the Hurricanes’ GM to complain about it. “My big fear is that this will be copy-catted… in the American League, it’s gonna be copy-catted across university hockey, it’s gonna be copy-catted in the CHL. I want nothing to do with it.” Boomers ruin everything.

Chicago: Yeah this ain’t great.

Colorado Avalanche: Sometimes you barely lose the second half of an all-road back-to-back. Wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Are we really gonna have this argument?

Dallas Stars: Seguin and Benn aren’t scoring but somehow it’s not a huge huge huge problem for these guys. Better than the alternative, I guess.

Detroit Red Wings: “For every positive…” good lord what universe is this?

Edmonton Oilers: To say “Leon Draisaitl almost lost an eye when he got caught with a high stick NEAR his eye is the exact kind of hysterical reporting we’ve come to expect from the Edmonton media.

Florida Panthers: The whole outshoot the opponents by a lot then lose 3-2 thing has to get pretty annoying after awhile.

Los Angeles Kings: Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse

Minnesota Wild: The Wild have won five straight? Huh, okay.

Montreal Canadiens: Carey Price is 25-11-5 against Boston, all time. That’s pretty amazing given how good the Bruins were for a good chunk of his career.

Nashville Predators: The Preds have a depth scoring problem. Maybe try putting Filip Forsberg on the fourth line???

New Jersey Devils: The Devils don’t have another home game for two weeks. How bad is their record gonna be by then?

New York Islanders: Weird that Robin Lehner, whose career numbers are very good, has been very good for the Isles so far this year. A very interesting coincidence.

New York Rangers: I honestly don’t mind half the good players on the Rangers getting benched too much. They’re supposed to be tanking. Bench your entire top line, who cares.

Ottawa Senators: Let me stop you right at the headline: “Yeah.”

Philadelphia Flyers: Yeah these guys stink. That’s it. Sorry.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Things shouldn’t be this easy, even against the Canucks.

San Jose Sharks: Yeah imagine if the league actually tried to be fun. Weird.

St. Louis Blues: The problem is that the Blues were always gonna have a ceiling of like “third- or fourth-best team in their own division” so any High Expectations around them were gonna be insane. Jake Allen’s still their goalie, y’know?

Tampa Bay Lightning: Victor Hedman might be out awhile, which seems like a problem.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Hmm this might be bad.

Vancouver Canucks: Well nice to have the fun guys back at least.

Vegas Golden Knights: Building on … first-year success” by being second-bottom in their division???

Washington Capitals: Pheonix Copley got his first career win and maybe that means I soon won’t be astonished at how is name is spelled every time I type it.

Winnipeg Jets: This was a tough loss. Maybe bring back Chris Thorburn.

Gold Star Award

Anders Lee is very quietly having himself a nice season in John Tavares’s absence. The rest of the team, well, status quo I guess you’d say.

Minus of the Weekend

Mikhail Sergachev was on the ice for six goals against… in a game against the Coyotes. I looked it up and it’s the single worst plus-minus anyone has ever had against the Jets/Coyotes franchise. That’s bad.

Play of the Weekend

Malkin is having some kinda season, man. Few will discuss this.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User “TSN jdog” is being considerate.

To Toronto:
Adam Larsson

To Edmonton:
Leafs 2019 1st
Travis Dermott
Ron Hainsey

Signoff

Y luego un disastro de electricidad.

Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)