Adrian Dater is burning the weekend oil to get us some major lineup changes for Sunday's game. Per his blog, Sunday's lines will be:
- Smyth, Hensick, Stewart
- Hejduk, Wolski, Jones
- Tucker, Arnason, Svatos
- McLeod, Laperriere, Willsie
No Ben Guite, which seems an odd choice given how bad the Avs have been in the circle lately. Other than that, I like this move. I never got a chance to cover this in an article, but when Stastny went down my first thought was to split Smyth and Hejduk up. There's a lot of "I'm curious to see" items here. Like, I'm curious to see how Wolski will do at center (I think he could be better than at left wing). And I'm curious to see how Hejduk looks on the left (not sure how this one will work out, but he too could use a little shakeup). Most of all, I've been lobbying to see Hensick get time on the first line, and I'm really curious (and excited) to see Smyth, Hensick and Stewart in action.
Budaj will be in net, which means I give Tony G two thumbs way up for this move. He certainly isn't above criticism this year, but I think he's handled his players a lot better than his predescesor. He gave Arnason a chance, and now he's moving on to Plan B. If Joel Quenneville was still the coach, Arnie would still be manning the first line tomorrow, Double Dub would be a healthy scratch and Andrew Raycroft would be between the pipes. So cheer up, folks, things could be worse!