EHM The Blue Line

I ran a fantasy draft and after a 2 trades for Madden and Niitty, This is my current line up.

Line 1 A. Ovechkin, J. Carter, D. Alfredsson

Line 2 Jason Blake, Tim Connolly, Trent Hunter

Line 3 John Madden, Jason Arnott, Chris Clark

Line 4 Mike York, Daniel Zubrus, Anthony Stewart

My general idea is to put the best offensive players on line 1 period.

Line 3 is set to hit hard, play defensive, agressive and on the boards.

Line 2 is set to play offensively, high tempo, creative passes and so on similar to line 1
They are the best of whats left (not that I'm complaining)

Because even line 4 is awesome. Line four's tactics are a mystery to me. They show even at O and D so I left it that way. They don't have the incredible skill level as line 1 and 2 so I left everything at normal.

In reserve I have Shawn Bates, Ryan Getzlaf and Arron Asham
Plus other minor league players of course

On D I have

Mattias Ohlund, Derek Morris

Janne Niinimaa, Scott Hannan

Ossi Vaananen, Radek Martinek

In Goal

Robert Esche
Antero Niittymaki

Any suggestions as to whether I should keep the lines this way.

In particular I was wondering, since I think I'm going to go with 4 even lines I found myself setting the time to 30s for the first 2 lines who are on the PP and 40s for the second two lines to get their ice time up. Only the third line is set to play aggressively. I don't seem to take that many penalties but it is only the end of the preseason.


Ohlund is on the 2nd PP and the 1st PK kill so he clocks over 30 minutes. Is that ok.

Niinimaa is 1st PP and Vaananen is 2nd PK

Morris is on 2nd PP and 2nd PK kill behind Martinek and Hannan respectively.

PK for forwards is Madden and Zubrus
then Arnott and Clark

York and Stewart are not on any special teams. I'm worried about keeping the players happy should I rotate them into the PP once in a while.

Since I'm trying to keep things even perhaps there is no reason to set up the defense this way perhaps I should change the pairings and even out the defensive skills more.

Am I better off keeping Getzlaf up and giving him 20-40 games or sending him down.
Bates is awesome on his own he can step in at center or left if there are any injuries.
Asham I might trade away.

Any thoughts welcome.

Craig

If you're thinking about keeping your team long-term I would trade some of the high-talent guys you have that don't appear to be in a good situation as far as ice time goes. You can get some pretty solid draft picks for a couple of those guys, so get rid of 'em and plan for the future. I can imagine it would hurt a player like Getzlaf's development to spend time in the AHL after having a full season in the bigs. Trade him or trade Connolly (or Zubrus) to make room for him to play every night. I think you should either trade Bates or make room for him in your lineup. I like to use injuries as an excuse to see what my young talent has to offer, so keeping a qualified NHLer in your farm system may take time away from prospects.

Ice time depends on stamina. I don't know Ohlund's stamina rating offhand but I would be comfortable playing him over 30 minutes if it's 17 or higher.