Okay, so the news we were all half-bracing for just dropped. Anaheim matched the offer sheet. Leo Carlsson is staying a Duck, and the one swing that would have fixed our center problem in a single afternoon is off the table.
I am not going to sit here and tell you Leo would not have made this roster better, because he would have. More than that, he would have slotted everybody down a peg into a cleaner, more natural role. Zegras stops having to be the answer in the middle. Michkov gets a true number-one center feeding him. Every line gets a little easier. Losing that stings, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But this is not the end of the world. Not even close. This is the same core group that made the playoffs last season, and the bet from here is a simple one: you hope these guys progress. And here is the piece that makes their progression matter twice as much. If a real number-one center does shake loose in a trade this year, it is going to be this young talent that becomes the price to go get him. Some of these kids will have to go out the door to bring a guy like that in. So every step Michkov, Martone, Bump, and Barkey take is both the plan and the currency. Either they grow into the answer, or they grow into the assets that land you the answer.
So let me go line by line, because I pulled the InStat numbers on every one of them, and the group tells a pretty clear story about who goes where.
Line 1: Martone, Dvorak, Konecny
This is the line I am not touching under any circumstances, and it is why I bumped it all the way up to the top spot. In the games Martone actually played last year, this trio was on the ice for 11 goals for and 2 against at five-on-five. That is a plus-9 in a hair over two hours of hockey.
Look at where they land against our other most-used combinations. Nobody buried teams like this line did. And notice the one at the bottom, because it is the theme that runs through this whole roster: the Barkey-Tippett-Couturier line actually controlled the shot share last year and still got outscored 10 to 7. This group wins with finishing and goaltending more than it does with raw volume, so the lines that actually put the puck in the net matter more than the fancy-stat darlings. Dvorak is the quiet glue on this unit. He wins better than half his draws and keeps everything honest defensively while Martone and TK do damage.
Line 2: Bump, Zegras, Michkov
Here is your skill line, and it starts with Zegras taking over the middle. He grabbed the center job in the back half of last season and never let go, finishing with 67 points to land a single point behind Konecny for the team scoring lead. Michkov chipped in 51 and looked more comfortable by the month.
Now let me be straight with you, because the chart splits it out. Zegras is your steady producer at both levels. Michkov put up a strong regular season and then went quiet in a short eight-game playoff run, which is nothing to lose sleep over for a young winger seeing playoff matchups for the first time. Bump is the interesting one. He only got into 17 regular-season games, but he produced at better than a half-point per game while he was in there, nine points in that limited look. His playoffs were quiet, outside of that nasty goal against Pittsburgh, so this is not a finished product. But a young winger scoring at that kind of clip when he gets the chance is exactly the trajectory you bet on, and that is why he earns the top-six runway to open the year.
Michkov stays on the right, and I want to be clear about why. He is a left shot living on his off-wing over there, which is exactly where you want him hunting one-timers and walking into that inside lane. We are not moving him and I get the sense that he doesn’t want to play the left either.
Now, I already know the question. Foerster just signed the big extension, so how is Bump up here getting the Zegras and Michkov looks while Tyson is on the third line? Fair, and let me explain, because this is not a demotion. That top line already has two guys who want the puck on their stick to create and shoot. What it does not have is a straight-line motor to forecheck, win the wall battles, and get the puck back to those two. That is Bump’s exact game. If you drop Foerster in there, you now have three guys hunting the same job and nobody doing the grunt work that feeds it. Foerster’s finishing does the most damage as the number-one triggerman on his own line, not as the third option on somebody else’s, and he is a power-play fixture regardless, so his ice time and his chances do not drop a bit. And if Bump does not produce up here, the fix is sitting right there on line three. That is a good problem to have.
Line 3: Foerster, Cates, Tippett
Speaking of which. Cates is the guy I keep coming back to, and this chart is the reason why.
He was a plus-22 last year. The next-closest everyday forward on the roster was plus-9. That is not a small edge, that is a different tier of two-way impact, and it is why he anchors this line with Foerster’s finish and Tippett’s speed on his wings. One honest flag though, the Foerster-and-Cates pairings bled shot attempts last season even when the goals held up, so this line is going to live and die by its zone starts and matchups. That is something to keep an eye on once the season gets going.
Line 4: Barkey, Couturier, Acciari
The fourth line is where deployment does the heavy lifting, and Couturier is the reason it works.
He is the best faceoff man on the roster, and it is not close. Put Couturier where he does his best work now, eating the hard defensive-zone draws and killing penalties, and this turns into a genuinely useful shutdown line. It gets better when you factor in that Acciari can win a draw too. He was at 53 percent this past season, so you are rolling out a fourth line with two centers who both win more than half their faceoffs, which is a real weapon late in a one-goal game when you need to start with the puck. He brings the physical, shot-blocking, penalty-killing edge to go with it. Barkey rounds out the line with a genuine runway and a safety net.
The blue line: the Risto domino
Here is the part of this that could actually sting early. The rumors have Rasmus Ristolainen on the move, and if Danny pulls that trigger, everyone needs to be ready for it to hurt for a stretch. People forget how that pairing actually performed.
Ristolainen-Sanheim was one of the only pairings we ran all year that actually outscored the opposition, 37 to 32. That is a right-shot top-four guy your number-one defenseman leans on every night, and you do not just wave that away. So on my card, if he is still here, he is the second-pair right side next to York. If he is dealt, this is where our new addition comes in.
We brought in Simon Benoit, and I like the piece for exactly what it is. He is a physical, shot-blocking, penalty-killing, stay-at-home guy who is not going to move the needle offensively. The seven points he put up last year tell you that. But he can slide up to that second-pair right side if Risto is gone, even if the one wrinkle is that he is another left shot on a blue line already stacked on the left, so he would be playing his off side up there.
The right side is really why the third pair matters so much this year. I am not handing a kid a locked-in job in July. What I want is a straight Jiricek versus Bonk competition, and whoever shows up to camp the best earns it. Jiricek is the louder swing, a former top-ten pick and a natural right shot who ate more than eighteen minutes a night in the AHL last season. The tools are real. The flip side is the film still shows the growing pains and the reads that need to tighten. Bonk is the steadier, higher-floor projection. Whichever one wins, breaking in a young right-side defenseman means some rough October nights. That is simply the cost of doing it the right way, and I would rather pay it with a prospect I control than overpay a rental to paper over it.
In net
Nothing complicated here. Vladar gets the crease and Woll backs him up. That is a perfectly fine tandem to run behind a young group while everybody in front of them figures it out.
The bottom line
This is not the ceiling we were dreaming about a week ago, and I will not insult you by pretending it is. But it is a floor we can absolutely live with. It is a playoff team’s core, plus a wave of kids we get to watch grow, plus every one of our first-round picks and the cap space still in the bank.
So you develop Michkov, Martone, Bump, Barkey, and the young right side, and you see who takes the leap. Because their rise is the whole story either way. Either it is the reason this team gets good, or it is the reason you can finally afford the number-one center you go out and get. That is realistic optimism, and that is where I land on this one.
Drop your tweaks in the comments and over on X. @BroadStBreakout
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