Kassian needs to work on his conditioning to be able to play the bigger minutes, but he’s capable of playing to that level once he is. He’ll only get better and looks like he’ll be a very good 2nd liner with size at least.

Cody who? lol

Heh. Nice.

Being the arm-chair coach, I’d move Higgins back to the 2nd line to regain the chemistry he had with Kesler and Booth pre-staph infection tribulations; Higgins is wasted on the checking line. Plus, that’d open a spot for Raymond to make himself useful, as he’s completely wasted (and ineffective) in a 4th line role. Might as well shelf Raymond if the only other option is as a 4th liner.

That way we’d have two balanced offensive lines, a dedicated checking line (centered by Pahlsson) and a 3rd/4th line (depending on how you look at it) that brings lots of crashing and banging but also some offensive potential while still being responsible defensively.

So it’d look something like this:

Daniel – Henrik – Burrows
Higgins – Kesler – Booth
Hansen – Pahlsson – Raymond
Kassian – Lapierre – Maholtra (or Weise or Bitz, if around and as needed)

Promising move. Even if Kassian doesn’t score, he may be able to open up some lanes for Booth and Kesler to hit the net.

This is exactly why I loved this trade. The Canucks can cycle for hours, but you do need more than one solid tactic in the playoffs. A scoring line that’s good on the rush is a perfect changeup to the Sedin line.

Hopefully Raymond will be a good fit on the bottom lines. His puck possession and skating are good enough to complement a defensive line. Though I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him as a healthy scratch by April.

It seems more likely that the “three” AV is referring to are the 3 deadline acquisitions. That would single out Gragnani as the softy.

Either that or he’s putting in a slight dig at Kesler because Booth and Kassian have played hard the last couple games.