The list arrives in the press box about an hour before the puck drops at WHL arenas league-wide.
It includes not only the scratches — players on the roster who are inactive — but also the offensive lines and defensive pairings for both teams playing that night.
When the game commences, players make line changes “on the fly” by jumping over the boards in both directions every 45 seconds or so. It can appear chaotic and arbitrary, but each line has a specific job to do when it hits the ice.
So what exactly is each line’s responsibility?
The top two lines are generally responsible for the bulk of the team’s scoring, but also must have the ability to defend — to be “two-way players,” according to Everett Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine, whose team is in Edmonton on Friday to take on the Oil Kings.
“The use of lines in hockey has evolved over the last 20 years,” Constantine said. “You’re trying to take the line and you’re trying to have the line do what their strengths are, and have the line do what the team needs. That’s going to be different for every group.”
Everett’s top line of Dawson Leedahl, Remi Laurencelle and Carson Stadnyk has combined for 45 goals and 58 assists this season. The second line of Graham Millar, Matt Fonteyne and Patrick Bajkov adds another 31 goals and 48 assists. The 76 goals produced by the top two lines are 62 percent of Everett’s season total of 123. Those two units also see the bulk of the work on the power play and penalty kill special teams.
Traditionally, the third and fourth lines were designed to provide energy and physical play, with the fourth line usually reserving a spot for the team’s “goon” or enforcer, Constantine said. But that style has been going away, and the Silvertips head coach said it’s more important to have quality two-way players on each line.
At the WHL level, the third and fourth lines are where you typically find the younger players and where most of the game-to-game scratches occur. Everett 16-year-old forwards Riley Sutter, Brian King and Connor Dewar occupy spots on these lines, not because they aren’t talented, but because of the developmental nature of the league.
“The job they’re being asked to do might be related to where they’re at in that developmental stage,” Constantine said. “We wouldn’t necessarily be asking them to provide a lot of offense for us. That might not be their role or their job at this point and it might not be their job within our team.”
Because players in the WHL span a five-year age gap during which they grow from boys into men, the roles each athlete plays within the team can change dramatically over time. Laurencelle, a self-described “fourth-line grinder” when he played at Lethbridge as a teenager, is now the Tips’ top offensive threat in his overage year.
Of course, the physical nature of the game means guys get hurt, and that requires the shuffling of the lines. Most recently winger Brandon Ralph, normally a fourth-line forward, spent a game each on the first and second lines while filling in for teammates.
Ralph started on the top line in last Saturday’s 5-1 over the Seattle Thunderbirds alongside Stadnyk and Laurencelle while he filled in for the injured Leedahl.
“For me, I try not to change my role,” Ralph said. “I try to bring what I can bring and make sure that those guys can still do their thing while I’m out there. … I just try to do my best to keep them comfortable and do my best to keep up.”
Ralph followed two days later with one of his best games as a Silvertip when he filled in for Millar on the second line. He scored the game-tying goal in the first minute of the second period, and the Tips went on to defeat Saskatoon 2-1 in overtime. During Wednesday’s 2-1 victory at Kamloops, Ralph was back on the fourth line, where he uses his 6-foot-2, 190-pound frame to provide a physical presence for the Tips.
“It’s something easy that I can bring every single night and keep consistent, so I really try to focus on that,” he said.
While offensive contributions from the bottom two lines are usually considered a bonus, at times those contributions become necessary because of the fatiguing nature of a 72-game WHL schedule.
For example, look what happened in Everett’s stretch of three road games in three nights over the Jan. 8-10 weekend. With the top two lines tasked with playing the bulk of the minutes in back-to-back overtime games, the Tips received goals from Ralph, third-line forward Dario Winkler and defenseman Tristen Pfeifer as they defeated Spokane in the weekend finale.
Constantine’s disciplined system requires buy-in from every player involved and so far it seems to be working as the Tips have soared into second place in the Western Conference with a 9-1-2-0 mark since the Christmas break.
“Every player comes with some gift in his game and that gift is why he’s able to play at this extremely high level of hockey,” Constantine said. “So you need to take that gift and utilize it within the team. You need to make his role suit what he brings to the table as a player.”
For the latest Silvertips news follow Jesse Geleynse on Twitter @jessegeleynse.
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