A Top 25 Under 25 All Star team has been assembled for the 2023 Top 25 Under 25.
The process was to take the best player for the position in a declining order to fill out the roster spots of the team. The 12-7-2 approach was selected as a base for the exercise, which left us with the following team:
For Option A we chose to place Kirby Dach as the winger on the Caufield-Suzuki line, a place where Dach performed well during the 22/23 season. The big question is if this is the right position for Dach, who is a strong centre man, maybe even the best option as a centre on the second line.
Looking at the defence the All Star team got a bit slanted with the second pairing as Guhle-Reinbacher looks solid on the first pairing, but the second pairing with Hutson-Barron might struggle a bit defensively and with that in mind a second, more balanced team was selected, a team we call Option B.
Option B
As Anton points out in the podcast, “the main reason to keep Dach as a second line centre is that quality centers who have both skill and size are difficult to come by. If you have such an opportunity in Kirby, it may be worth sacrificing him as a complimentary player on the first line with Caufield and Suzuki.
Still, even if he were to be 5% better in the winger spot next to Suzuki, it would still be worth the worth to have a really good second line centre if he can be that sacrificing a little bit of offensive potential perhaps but still having someone who can anchor a second line for years to come.”
Matt adds his own thoughts to the question of Dach as a second line centre; “He could potentially be a really effective 1B to Suzuki’s 1A and if you have that kind of a configuration instead of having a clear number one, a clear number two, you’ve got a 1A and 1B and you can run them against anybody that you want.
That is invaluable as this team gets to the other side of the rebuild and starts looking to get back to competing because you’re, you’re running two very good lines. Then all you gotta do is hope that Owen Beck to that, you know, really good defensive third line centre role and all of a sudden you got three lines deep that you can run any time you want, and you could be a problem for almost any team in the NHL with that kind of a configuration.”
Two players that are notably absent from the list is: Emil Heineman who had a great start to his North American campaign, and Arber Xhekaj who had a good first year in the NHL.
If you are interested in listen to the podcast, you have the link to it below:
