WWYDW: Would You Dare Mix It Up?

The following is a crazy idea, but this series has been nothing short of all kinds of crazy, so humor us for a moment…

Paul Maurice has been known to take out the line blender mid-game if things aren’t going well for the Jets – he has in the last couple of losses in this series – but what if he brought out the blender before the puck drops on game seven?

Game seven if a playoff series isn’t exactly the time to be tinkering with your lineup, but inspired by our boy Tony and his tweet from yesterday morning it got me thinking…

Sending out Josh Morrissey and Jacob Trouba along with Dustin Byfuglien and Tobias Enstrom is always a solid idea, but the second part of that… Split up Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele? That’s crazy, right?

Crazy enough to maybe work? Patrik Laine has played well previously with Scheifele as his center. Wheeler and Kyle Connor worked out very well while Scheifele was out with injury back in Janurary – in fact one could argue that it was in that time during the Scheifele injury that Connor truly came into his own as a legit top six forward for the Jets.

Maybe Paul Maurice’s starting lineup is Little with Armia and Perreault, but then – to really get Petere Laviolette and the Nashville coaches thinking – he puts out  Paul Stastny with Wheeler and Connor onto the ice next and then follows that up with a shift from a Scheifele led line with Nik Ehlers and Laine as his wingers.

Nashville has spent pretty much every game in this series on attack mode right from the start and they’ve done so by focusing on the Jets top line of Scheifele, Wheeler and Connor. Blake and Mark are the Jets two leading scorers in these playoffs while the younger players – Connor, Ehlers and Laine have struggled a bit to find the back of the net. Maybe splitting up that top line will help spark the offense early.

But again, to do this in a game seven setting would take some nerves of steel on the part of PoMo.

Sound off in the comments below or let us know what you think on our Twitter feed!

Arctic Spas is a proud partner of the Nation Network. Looking for a way to stay warm during hockey season? Check out a local dealer near you.