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Hodgson will get his shot with Kesler on the 2nd line along with either Samuelsson or Marco Sturm. I see Sturm and Samuelsson alternating on the 2nd and 3rd line until Raymond is ready to play. If Hodgson does well, he'll keep the 2nd line spot and Samuelsson will probably get bumped down for a Samuelsson-Malhotra-Sturm line on the 3rd with Hodgson-Kesler-Raymond on the 2nd.
But if not, Hodgson gets sent down and we are back to Kesler centering a 2nd line that has three (or possibly 4 depending on who else can step up) interchangable wingers depending on injury and production.
Right now, we're quite light in the bottom six...mostly the 4th line because
Daniel-Henrik-Burrows
Hodgson-Kesler-Samuelsson
Sturm-Malhotra-Hansen
??? - Lapierre - ???
...looks like it's set. However, if your 4th line is your biggest worry, then not doing too badly. Canucks need to shore up some depth and I don't mean signing all these guys to play on the Wolves. We need another couple decent forwards that can round out our 4 lines. We have strength on the back end if everyone is healthy. A full year of Edler and Salo will be good even if we lost Ehrhoff. I think Tanev is ready to play but definitely short, 3rd pairing minutes.
But as we saw in the 2011 playoffs, you can't have enough NHL-level forwards. Injuries will always thin out the roster by the time June rolls around.
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