BoSoxFink said:
Is this due to Beagle being known as a good defensive center and Oates is trying to cover up Ovechkin's lack of defensive awareness? Perhaps FAH can expand on this.
It's... a questionable decision, at best. My basic read on why it's happening is for these reasons:
1) Putting Beagle with Ovechkin and Johansson adds a grinding defensive center. Since they're not producing offensively, at least make it harder to score against them. It worked in a very small sample on the west coast road trip. For what it's worth, Backstrom is a good defensive center as well, so it's not like this is some instant solution.
2) Beagle and Johansson are both fast. I think it's supposed to be a method of trying to make Ovechkin simplify his game and just go north-south at the net. Needless to say, this isn't working.
3) Finally, separating Ovechkin from Backstrom may make the Caps a tougher match up? You can't pair your top defense on both. Every coach who has had these guys has had this brilliant stroke of logic at some point. At the end of the day, I think they're best together, but am willing to entertain the idea
if/when Ovechkin has a legitimate center. Mikhail Grabovski can fit the bill well enough.
Speaking of Grabovski, he returned to the lineup yesterday and began the game centering the 4th line (Penner-Grabovski-Wilson) with Johansson-Beagle-Ovechkin as the top line. That's pretty inexplicable to me. Later in the game Oates actually moved Grabovski to the first line, but not in a way that makes sense. He made the top line Grabovski-Beagle-Ovechkin, while dropping Johansson to 2LW and Kuznetsov to 4LW. Doesn't make sense.
Personally, I would be rolling one set of the below lines right now. Backtrom and Grabovski are interchangeable in the first set, as are Kuznetsov and Johansson. I'm willing to buy into the idea of trying to separate Ovechkin and Backstrom
if both had two legitimate linemates with Jay Beagle not counting. I would also toy with the idea of putting Wilson as a top-6 LW (offhand) and shifting Johansson down to the 4th for a while to see if it jump starts the offense a bit. Ovechkin has had some of his best success with a big boy running on his line in guys like Zubrus (6'5, 225), Kozlov (6'4, 232), and Knuble (6'3, 223). Tom Wilson (6'4, 210+) certainly fits the bill and I think would surprise a lot of people with his touch playing with Backstrom.
Kuznetsov - Grabovski - Ovechkin
Johansson - Backstrom - Brouwer
Chimera - Fehr - Ward
Penner - Beagle - Wilson
Wilson - Backstrom - Ovechkin
Kuznetsov - Grabovski - Brouwer
Chimera - Fehr - Ward
Penner - Johansson - Beagle