Photo: Amanda Bowen
Let me be clear: I don’t care about the preseason of any sport, not even hockey. Takeaways from preseason are often worthless, for a wide variety of reasons. Intersquad scrimmages are even further down the ladder of things we should care about and read into. And, considering line combinations aren’t worth getting worked up about on a day-to-day basis during the season, no one should read much into lines from a scrimmage at training camp.
But let’s do it anyway.
https://twitter.com/alex_prewitt/status/645602663065853953
https://twitter.com/alex_prewitt/status/645604448845365248
https://twitter.com/alex_prewitt/status/645657081010352128
A few quick takeaways:
- Evgeny Kuznetsov appears to have the inside track on centering Alex Ovechkin on the first line while Nick Backstrom recovers from hip surgery. TJ Oshie also joins the pair.
- Trotz is going to take a look at Johansson-Burakovsky-Williams as his second line, which is awesome and cool.
- Chimera-Laich-Wilson would be a disaster of a third line. But, it’s not surprising to see three bottom-six players together during camp. I’ll be concerned If this is still a thing after 10 games, and they are getting killed like I think they will.
- Derek Roy appears to be on the outside looking in, as he’s skating with two other bubble players, Liam O’Brien and Chris Brown.
- I’m trying to figure out who Jay Beagle and Michael Latta are going to be skating with…
Lines from a scrimmage on the third day of training camp aren’t worth reading into, but they can help give a look at which way Barry Trotz is leaning and player combinations he’s curious to see together.
