JGD 74: “Watazombieataku!”

10 years ago

With Carolina and Dallas already in the “L” column, the Jets are on the left coast to play the league’s third place team and the current leaders of the vaunted Pacific Division.

A cat in a shark costume riding a zoomba while hunting a duckling has nothing to do with that. I just thought we all needed a little cheering up.

Lines

Jets Forwards

Ladd – Little – Frolik
Byfuglien – Jokinen – Wheeler
Kane – O’Dell – Halischuk
Tangradi – Slater – Peluso

Devin Setoguchi has to face the shame of returning to his former home as a health scratch tonight. He’ll be shaking Big Joe’s hand for his 1,200th career game below the stands, no doubt, and maybe recalling his only 30 goal season with a tinge of wishful nostalgia to play with one of the league’s premier play makers again. Certainly it’s been a disappoint year for Setoguchi, and not the first of his relatively short career.

It’s always hard to know with this team – was it the coach? Was it the centreman? Perhaps it was the long stretch where he played with Chris Thorburn on the other wing, or the other long stretch where he had to play left wing for the first time in his career. He wasn’t given a lot of support on this club this season, but he’s not the first to be put in a tough position and expected to succeed where others hadn’t or even couldn’t.

That’s was the way of things under Claude Noel, and the recent stretch of losing hockey has returned some focus to the awkward lineups put together by the new coach as well. The team is a winger short of a top-9 and has further constraints created by the poor chemistry between Kane and Jokinen.

But hey – Ladd’s back!

Jets Defence

Stuart – Trouba
Enstrom – Ellerby
Pardy – Postma

Montoya
Hutchinson

DailyFaceoff.com has these pairings up in this order. It made me laugh and then feel sad inside. With Bogosian out and Byfuglien on wing, Stuart and Trouba are genuinely the team’s top pairing. A season ago, Stuart was a marginal third pairing player and PK specialist. It’s a credit to Trouba that he can drag Stuart this high in the depth chart, but it’s also an indictment of the quality of this blue line that Stuart’s become so important.

Luckily for him, the team has some even more marginal options in Pardy, Ellerby, and Postma.

Sharks Forwards

Sheppard – Thornton – Burns
Kennedy – Marleau – Nieto
Wingels – Pavelski – Havlat
Brown – Desjardins – Hamilton

These aren’t the lines from the Sharks’ recent game in Edmonton, but with Burish braking a finger in gruesome fashion that night, things are being shaken up a bit. This is a forward group that is also missing star Logan Couture and rookie sensation Tomas Hertl.

I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about Brent Burns as the model for Dustin Byfuglien switching to forward and all the great success brought to the Sharks by this decision. So I feel it’s important to point out that he made the transition because he wasn’t at all the type of defender the team wanted, and his relative success includes moving from a low-scoring team to a high-scoring one and almost immediately entering the lineup next to a star centre on a club with excellent structure and discipline.

For the Jets, the question isn’t whether Byfuglien is a better forward than defender, or even whether the team has fewer mistakes with him touching the puck less. The question is, would Byfuglien still struggle with turnovers with a new, more organized coach? Moreover, what is the best way to get the most out of this player?

Sharks Defence

Vlasic – Demers
Irwin – Boyle
Stuart – Braun

Niemi
Stalock

Dan Boyle has had a very tough year for scoring, whether due to father time, unspoken injury, or just his role. Fortunately for the team, Marc-Edouard Vlasic continues to develop into a premier defender in this league. Brad Stuart was a top-pairing defender for the Red Wings a year ago and lets them spread out their young players to play with veteran partners. Not surprisingly, given their 103 accumulated team points, it’s a terrific defence group. They excel at possession play, both making quick transitions off their own end-boards and eating up space in the neutral zone.

In comparison to the Jets, they don’t have a lot of big bodies. And yet, their success is undeniable. Even the Blues have a puck-moving and mobile back-end. Stick-optional types are going extinct in this league and will slowly collect on bad teams who refuse to adapt to a possession-focused league.