Flyers coach Craig Berube dropped a nugget at lunch today with the assembled media.
He said he was contemplating putting Erik Gustafsson back in the lineup Saturday afternoon against the Boston Bruins.
The hard-luck, young defenseman suffered a knee sprain last month in an awkward collision at Columbus against Corey Tropp.
Although he's been healthy for a couple weeks now, Andrej Meszaros has played well since replacing him and Berube has been reluctant to change his blue line even though Gus has missed 16 games now.
You don't change lineup when you're winning and the Flyers were during most of Gustafsson's absence but have now lost three straight games in which they're a mess in several areas of their game.
The reason you might want to plug the 25-year-old Swede into the lineup is because the Flyers are having so much trouble on their breakout.
We all know the defense, as a whole, is slow. Combine that with some misplays in their own end and it gets magnified, as we saw against Columbus during that 5-2 loss on Thursday night.
So let's assume Gustafsson plays against the Bruins. Who comes o ut?
My vote is Luke Schenn, who continues to get beat on plays from every which way. What was so unnerving in the Blue Jacket defeat was Schenn abandoning the crease to chase Derek MacKenzie to the far boards.
Schenn is as slow as they come and do that with the puck still loose was crazy because by the time the Flyers defenseman got back to the crease, MacKenzie had taken a pass and skated down the slot for a crucial tying goal after the Flyers had grabbed a lead four minutes earlier.
Schenn has been benched already once this year and you wonder whether Berube can do it twice. Right now, the Schenn for James van Riemsdyk trade looks very, very one-sided in favor of the Toronto Maple Leafs and to bench Schenn represents a bit of discomfort to Flyers management for making that deal in the first place given JVR's rise in stock.
The other option is to go with 7 defensemen and not worry about the fourth line given how poorly Steve Downie is playing and how few minutes that line gets. You keep Adam Hall around because of his penalty killing and defensive faceoff draws only.
Really, how much are the Flyers getting out of their fourth line that warrants not getting a more mobile defensemen in the picture?
Who would you remove from the lineup?
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