Tuesday, February 05, 2008

The Defensive Pairing Carousel!

Wheel of morality turn turn turn
Tell us the lesson that we should learn


With McCabe coming back on Thursday the Maple Leafs now have a decent selection of available defenders. The problem is, who plays with who?

Initially I want to say:

Kubina-Kaberle
McCabe-Stralman
Gill-Colaiacovo

Kaberle and Kubina play fairly well together, and until McCabe is 100% back to speed they can both eat up a lot of minutes on the ice.

McCabe will benefit from playing with Stralman since Stralman is a good skater and outlet passer and is probably willing to defer to McCabe's shot on the point. Stralman will benefit from the more physical defensive game McCabe plays than he does.

Colaiacovo and Gill are then a third pairing in name only, I think they're two solid players who can both get physical and could be used to hit opponents skilled lines.

We'll see how all of this plays out, I'm just hoping Cola can stay healthy for a while and really start to develop.

2 comments:

Loser Domi said...

that last sentence is the most important one there.

Gobias said...

I like the sound of those pairings. This should be our strongest unit in quite some time (*knock on wood)