Deboar slowly losing cup chance because of love affair with Reaves

yave1964 · September 11, 2020

Look, to be clear, i like Ryan Reaves. I love his style, i wish more people would play his type of game. But Peter Deboer is slowly pissing away the Knights season with his love affair with the fourth line.

Carrier-Reaves-Nosek are a wrecking ball line, they hit everything and everyone early and often, in every game they take the opening faceoff regardless of the other teams lineup. IMHO it is killing the Knights chances.

Usually this time of year those players are shelved for players with a better Corsi/Fenwick (Reaves is dreadful, Carrier is barely tolerable, Nosek isnt bad). You can carry a trained missle in the regular season but not in the playoffs. You need all the offense you can get, all the two way play as well. This 4th line is designed for the regular season, not the postseason.

Lets look at what the Knights have done after running roughshod early in the playoffs. They won the three seeding games handily, bombed the Hawks and started line world beaters against the Canucks. In the first 12 playoff games they went 10-2 with a goal differential of 45 to 29. Reilly Smith, Marchessault, Tuch, MaxPax so many others were scoring at will.

Then Vancouver changed goalies going with rookie Demko and the Knights quit scoring. Since Demko went in they went 2-4 and have only managed a pathetic 6 goals in six games.

Look, it isnt all the 4th lines fault, they are doing all they have been asked to do but they are not respected offensively by the opponent and it has allowed opposing coaches to rest their best and second best defenders, allowing them to play big minutes against the two big lines of the Knights. Another thing it has done, is this, as the series with Dallas has progressed, Deboer has shorted the ice time for the fourth line to single minutes a night, the trio of Reaves/Nosek/Carrier in the OT loss to Dallas played a combined 21 minutes, meaning they are down to 7 minutes a night per man putting more pressure on the top lines with too much ice time. in comparison the Stars bottom line of Gurianov/Hintz/Perry played a total of 37 minutes in the game, a bit over 12 minutes per man. On top of that, the Stars 4th line is capable of the more than occasional goal and even plays on the power play while the Knights 4th line is useless in any area other than 5 on 5.

I listen to Hockey Central, i absolutley love Jeff Marek and think he knows the game inside and out (although the sound of Brian Burke breathing hard into the microphone like a sleazy perv is getting harder and harder to hear). Marek raves about Reaves but he is wrong. Reaves has no place on a playoff teams roster, no way no how. He is one dimensional, zero offense, a hard worker with no speed who is out of position defensively and takes dumb penalties. He brings enough to the game to play in the regular season, same with Carrier and Nosek, but while Carrier does a good job in the dot and Nosek can play up the lines if needed, Reaves brings zero to a postseason run.

By sticking with the roster the way it is, Deboer is handing a huge advantage to the opponent who can run four lines, rest their top two defense pairings whenever the Reaves line is out there, and wear down the top two lines of the Knights who are regularly playing near 20 minutes a night per man to make up for the Reaves line being non existent, By this time in the playoffs the Stars are running four near equal lines while the Knights are wearing down.

Deboer fell in love with Reaves in the regular season and has romanticized his value, take a team like Tampa who recognizes they have more and better depth defense than forwards, they regularly run 7D every night in the postseason instead of a 7-8 minute a night knuckle dragger they have a 7th defender who is skilled and allows for a ton of flexibility.

This reminds me of when Dave Lewis took over for Bowman in Detroit and fell in love with Draper. I love Draper, an underrated penalty killer and especially faceoff man, but in the postseason Lewis would overplay him and other teams would adjust. Instead of Draper being a weapon his deficiencies became something the other team could exploit. It cost the Wings at least one playoff series i remember screaming at the TV as Draper was taking offensive zone faceoffs in the postseason (something he never did in the regular season) and the opponent adjusted.

Deboer has not made adjustments as the postseason has went along. Patrik Brown can score a bit and play any forward position, he sits in the press box. Most nights so does useful defender Merrill. Talented skilled kids Hague and Glass are a memory. Instead the 4th line is having prose written about how great they are (they are not) and the top lines are beat down and worn down. Deboer is at fault for the Knights season being on the brink in the same way that Dave Lewis was with the Wings.