What can we learn from the Cup champions both this year and last year and how Babs coaches?
Pitts has 3 elite forwards and by the time the dust settled with the coaching change and the new coach became familiar with his team, those 3 players were played on 3 separate lines. Chicago has 2 elite forwards and rarely do they play on the same line. This spread out the wealth made defending against these teams extremely difficult. The Kessel line looked very good and was very effective during the playoffs and that was most likely due to the elite player Kessel elevating the games/effectiveness of his linemates. Crosby doesn't score for 7 games yet Pitts still wins the Cup. Talent is essential to win championships but so is depth so having the talent spread out rather than concentrated, the quality of Pitts' depth was seemingly greater and an essential component of their Cup win.
What does this have to do with Babs, when he was coaching Detroit Datsyuk and Zetterberg rarely played together no matter how desperate the team was for more offense. Babs has always spread out the wealth on his teams and we've seen that he wouldn't improve Kadri's linemates to find more offense. TO might have Marner and Matthews on the team this year but I doubt we'll ever see them playing together as this isn't how Babs coaches which I think is the best way to maximize all of the assets of a team. Maybe Marner and Matthews will someday be good enough to win a scoring championship but I think on a Babs coached team they would have to do it with players like Kane plays with on Chicago rather than doing it together on one line.
I look at teams like Dallas and Anaheim and basically they load up one line which is very successful during the regular season but as a Cup winning strategy will probably always be wanting in the cap era.
Pitts has 3 elite forwards and by the time the dust settled with the coaching change and the new coach became familiar with his team, those 3 players were played on 3 separate lines. Chicago has 2 elite forwards and rarely do they play on the same line. This spread out the wealth made defending against these teams extremely difficult. The Kessel line looked very good and was very effective during the playoffs and that was most likely due to the elite player Kessel elevating the games/effectiveness of his linemates. Crosby doesn't score for 7 games yet Pitts still wins the Cup. Talent is essential to win championships but so is depth so having the talent spread out rather than concentrated, the quality of Pitts' depth was seemingly greater and an essential component of their Cup win.
What does this have to do with Babs, when he was coaching Detroit Datsyuk and Zetterberg rarely played together no matter how desperate the team was for more offense. Babs has always spread out the wealth on his teams and we've seen that he wouldn't improve Kadri's linemates to find more offense. TO might have Marner and Matthews on the team this year but I doubt we'll ever see them playing together as this isn't how Babs coaches which I think is the best way to maximize all of the assets of a team. Maybe Marner and Matthews will someday be good enough to win a scoring championship but I think on a Babs coached team they would have to do it with players like Kane plays with on Chicago rather than doing it together on one line.
I look at teams like Dallas and Anaheim and basically they load up one line which is very successful during the regular season but as a Cup winning strategy will probably always be wanting in the cap era.
