With on-ice work scheduled to kick off tomorrow – the players went through physicals today – new Head Coach Peter Laviolette came out to face the media and paint a picture of how he’ll approach the next few days leading into Sunday’s preseason match-up with the Boston Bruins.
The main theme: experimentation, or at least to a certain extent. One of first proclamations was that Alexis Lafreniere would start camp on the right wing, a move that widely expected after a long Summer of introspection and speculation.
As GM Chris Drury hinted last week, the expectation is that Laviolette will not look to necessarily settle into the same combinations that were used before – as Gallant did – but to try a few things. That may extend more to the forward combinations than the defense though. Laviolette did mention that he’ll start with the current top two pairings on the blueline, but did suggest that he might try some different versions during camp.
As mentioned in our defense projections, we wouldn’t mind seeing what a K’Andre Miller – Adam Fox pairing would like, or for that matter if Ryan Lindgren and Jacob Trouba played as a pair.