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Nicolas Deslauriers


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10 minutes ago, BigTed3 said:

I actually hate the 4th line, outside of Carr, whom I love there. Carr is great. He can skate, he can get to the net, he can play physically, and he can score. Deslauriers had one good game and that's it. He puts his team in trouble defensively (as I posted tonight, each time he threw a big check, our team had a scoring chance against), and he is a pretty brutal skater. Not NHL quality in my view.

You seem to have a grudge against him. He did a better job when he was on the ice than most players on the team. Patches? Hudon? Galchenyuk? They brought squat tonight.

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1 minute ago, habs1952 said:

You seem to have a grudge against him. He did a better job when he was on the ice than most players on the team. Patches? Hudon? Galchenyuk? They brought squat tonight.

I don't have a grudge against him personally. I just don't like that he's overused and overrated by his coaches. Why did he get called up ahead of Carr? The former was average at best in the AHL, the latter was lighting it up and didn't get the call ahead of him. Deslauriers is a pretty bad skater. His technique is pretty appallingly bad. And while he tries hard and puts in effort, he just lacks skill. His career thus far has shown he's mostly a goon without the skillset to be a consistent NHL player. So to see him thrown out there with more ice than skill players is upsetting. A lot of our skill guys had bad games too, but my beef is not so much with Deslauriers as it is with the coaching staff giving the 4th line a regular shift.

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He's a prototypical 4th liner ... and the comment that "I love Carr on the 4th line" is amusing to me.   "He can skate, he can get to the net, he can play physically, and he can score" ... those aren't generally the qualities you want in a long term 4th line player.   The 4th line is there to chew up minutes and to try and tire out the other teams top 3 lines.    In some cases they're also the guys you lean on to kill penalties since their regular strength ice time is more limited.

 

 

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The fourth line is often called the "energy line," both because their shifts give other players a chance to rest, and because their physically oriented play is said to give their teammates an emotional boost. It is usually composed of journeymen with limited scoring potential, but strong physical play and, as often as possible, strong skating abilities. With the smallest amount of ice time, they tend to play in short bursts rather than pace themselves. Pests and enforcers usually play the fourth line, as do centers whose primary skill is winning faceoffs. The fourth line can be a checking line

 

Should have just kept Dwight King , at least he won a Stanley Cup , and knows how to win ;)

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1 hour ago, Regis22 said:

The fourth line is often called the "energy line," both because their shifts give other players a chance to rest, and because their physically oriented play is said to give their teammates an emotional boost. It is usually composed of journeymen with limited scoring potential, but strong physical play and, as often as possible, strong skating abilities. With the smallest amount of ice time, they tend to play in short bursts rather than pace themselves. Pests and enforcers usually play the fourth line, as do centers whose primary skill is winning faceoffs. The fourth line can be a checking line

 

Should have just kept Dwight King , at least he won a Stanley Cup , and knows how to win ;)

The 4th line being an energy line or just a hitting line is actually "Old school" hockey or thinking. Babcock in Detroit was one of the first to spread out his offensive players throughout and to want all lines as skating lines. It should be 4 lines you can roll keeping the whole team in the game and wearing out your opponents with speed and some skill. Utilize your top players with PP and PK and when possible roll 4 lines. The "old" 1st line 2nd line thinking is so much easier for opponents to defend against.  

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13 hours ago, BigTed3 said:

I don't have a grudge against him personally. I just don't like that he's overused and overrated by his coaches. Why did he get called up ahead of Carr? The former was average at best in the AHL, the latter was lighting it up and didn't get the call ahead of him. Deslauriers is a pretty bad skater. His technique is pretty appallingly bad. And while he tries hard and puts in effort, he just lacks skill. His career thus far has shown he's mostly a goon without the skillset to be a consistent NHL player. So to see him thrown out there with more ice than skill players is upsetting. A lot of our skill guys had bad games too, but my beef is not so much with Deslauriers as it is with the coaching staff giving the 4th line a regular shift.

I actually think he's not a terrible skater.  Yes his form is horrendous but he seems to have decent speed and makes it work. He wont win any 'smooth skating awards' but i dont think his skating is his biggest issue. And like you i dont think its effort either - he'd put his face in front of a puck if it meant stopping a goal.   I think he's got zero hockey sense. Sure he had a great game - Bulis scored 4 one year - but I dont see him as a great roster spot going forward.  maybe - maybe - if we have a good 1-2 on that line (schebak - carr) and he just crashes the net - but Froese-DLR-Deslauriers is not a great option imho. 
 

12 hours ago, HabsAlways said:

He's a prototypical 4th liner ... and the comment that "I love Carr on the 4th line" is amusing to me.   "He can skate, he can get to the net, he can play physically, and he can score" ... those aren't generally the qualities you want in a long term 4th line player.   The 4th line is there to chew up minutes and to try and tire out the other teams top 3 lines.    In some cases they're also the guys you lean on to kill penalties since their regular strength ice time is more limited.

There is no "set" 4th line.  The 4th line usually consists of pluggers and minute-eaters, sure but thats usually a biproduct of organizational depth.  You can make an argument that its better to have skilled players getting big minutes in the minors, rather than low minutes on the 4th line but if you have skill at your disposal, you are better off using it.  

10 hours ago, CaptWelly said:

The 4th line being an energy line or just a hitting line is actually "Old school" hockey or thinking. Babcock in Detroit was one of the first to spread out his offensive players throughout and to want all lines as skating lines. It should be 4 lines you can roll keeping the whole team in the game and wearing out your opponents with speed and some skill. Utilize your top players with PP and PK and when possible roll 4 lines. The "old" 1st line 2nd line thinking is so much easier for opponents to defend against.  

Yeah, even further back - the oilers in the 80s often played a skilled "kid line" for their 4th.  There's no set rules about what kind of players you need on any particular line.

I honestly couldnt care less if we had 4 defensively responsible lines or 2 skilled lines, a checking line and a tough line - whatever - as long as its deployed properly.   Our 4th line (most of) this year has looked really bad though so I think CJ needs to fix that, no matter what he decides to do. 

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21 hours ago, HabsAlways said:

He's a prototypical 4th liner ... and the comment that "I love Carr on the 4th line" is amusing to me.   "He can skate, he can get to the net, he can play physically, and he can score" ... those aren't generally the qualities you want in a long term 4th line player.   The 4th line is there to chew up minutes and to try and tire out the other teams top 3 lines.    In some cases they're also the guys you lean on to kill penalties since their regular strength ice time is more limited.

 

 

 

20 hours ago, CaptWelly said:

The 4th line being an energy line or just a hitting line is actually "Old school" hockey or thinking. Babcock in Detroit was one of the first to spread out his offensive players throughout and to want all lines as skating lines. It should be 4 lines you can roll keeping the whole team in the game and wearing out your opponents with speed and some skill. Utilize your top players with PP and PK and when possible roll 4 lines. The "old" 1st line 2nd line thinking is so much easier for opponents to defend against.  

 

I'm not sure what part about my liking Carr is amusing. To clarify, I'm not saying he needs to be stuck on the 4th line. I'd be fine with him being on a 3rd line too, and I've advocated for him in that role over the past couple of years. But with our scoring depth this year, I don't see him leapfrogging Hudon or Lehkonen or so on, so he's almsot stuck on the 4th line or in the AHL as a result. To me, he's more useful on the 4th line than any of the other guys we've tried there, and so I love his being there in that I think he's actually a useful player.

As has been stated, I don't think there's an expressed rule about what players need to play where. To believe your 4th liners have to be heavy hitters or goons is a pretty old-school mentality that doesn't really apply to today's NHL. Why? Well, for one, with the rule changes that have removed a lot of the obstruction from the game, you simply have to be able to skate to keep up in the league today. There's no role for a Parros or Laraque or Scott because whatever benefit one thinks they bring in terms of protecting others, they hurt you more by being a liability on the ice. We saw over and over with these types of players how little we could use them because of their limtied skillsets. Deslauriers isn't as bad as any of those guys, but he's still a weak skater and has weak puck skills. Everything he does looks very awkward and unnatural.

Second, the game has become more of a young man's game than it was in the past. In the old way of doing things, veteran guys hung around in the league and things like toughness and shot blocking and experience probably counted a bit more. But now, forwards peak when they're 20-24 years old. The roster turnover is higher because the cap forces you to find younger, cheaper options to balance the ability to pay your stars. And with the league opened up more to global sources of players, the pool of younger guys looking to steal a veteran's job is much wider. So there's definitely more flexibility to use your lower roster spots to bring in younger, cheaper, faster players.

So coming back to our 4th line, the truth is that many teams have gone the road of playing younger skill players there rather than older, slower grit players. Minnesota has been big on this for years. Detroit was cited as another example above. There's nothing that has forced us to use King, Ott, Martinsen, Brown, Blunden, and Moen on the 4th. We could have easily played guys like Andrighetto, Hudon, Scherbak, Carr, and so on in those roles instead. Personally, I don't see a role for a player like Deslauriers. He's not a younger player whom we expect to develop into something better. He's not a skill player who can move up the line-up if we have an injury or another player doing poorly. He's not really that adept at face-offs or penalty killing, and his skating is a problem. His straight-line speed may not be terrible, but his technique is poor and he doesn't show a lot of finesse making turns and tracking others. When healthy, I'd rather construct our 4th line with players like Carr, Scherbak, Byron, or Shaw and at least have guys who have ability to produce offence and create match-up problems. If they provide energy (as Carr, Byron, and Shaw do), all the better. But I'd rather promote skill and skating over grit and effort.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/6/2017 at 7:00 PM, ramcharger440 said:

Well i like him just fine. he had too much ice here and there but part of that is due to his PK work too.

He's defnitely growing on me.   I didnt like the callup and I dont think Froese is a great centre but if you had something like  Deslauriers-BigMac-Carr  I think that could be a decent 4th line. 

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51 minutes ago, maas_art said:

He's defnitely growing on me.   I didnt like the callup and I dont think Froese is a great centre but if you had something like  Deslauriers-BigMac-Carr  I think that could be a decent 4th line. 

He may not bring a lot to the table but the effort is there every night.

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19 hours ago, kinot-2 said:

He sure brings a lot of energy, 5 hits for the TOI that he got. 

Hits can be exciting, but you always have to remember that things like hits and blocked shots means you didn't have the puck. Players who have better possession numbers don't have to hit as much. Always take that stat with a grain of salt. To me, hits is one stat where you don't look at the number of absolute hits, you should look at the quality of hits as well as whether they led to a recovery of puck possession.

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Good intensity, yes. But again, this is a player who is rocking a 44% Corsi and 114 PDO. He's shooting over 18% right now, whereas his career average is 7%. His stats and play are going to come crashing back down to earth. Right now, his lines are getting outplayed but they're outscoring the opposition. The numbers say it's not going to last. I thought he actually played his best game last time out against Calgary, but I have doubts the 4th line will continue to provide positive scoring numbers.

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