Quote:
Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue
They have enough toughness in Greene, Staois, Moreau, etc.
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Tell that to Hemsky (and Pouliot, Cogliano, Gagner, Nilsson) when we play Minnesota. Trust me, I'm not saying Stortini is the answer and would rather see them use Jacques/Greene as their enforcers, but there is no certainty in saying either of those guys is going to be in the lineup regularily. Right now we have Moreau and Staios as our main two "tough" guys. Neither is particularily big, Moreau is getting quite an injury history at this point, and Staios is likely to be our #1 D for the PK which makes it hard for him to take too many penalties himself. As it stands, Penner may be our most imposing forward, another guy you don't want spending too much time in the box.
Smid is nice as he is a D man that would stick his nose in there (certainly not a true enforcer by any means) when things get heated, could play both sides of the special teams and be very effective 5 on 5. Gilbert looks like he could be a very good player, but I just can't see how he'd be ahead of Smid at this point, especially given our lack of PK capable defensemen on the squad right now.
Going to be a fast squad with lots of skill, but so far it looks like the brass hasn't learned any lessons from the physical beatings and resulting injuries that plagued them last year.