GM: Bryan Camara
Coach: Barry Trotz
Last season: 5th place overall. In playoffs, defeated Athens, then defeated Paris, then lost to Berlin
Ins and Outs
(Season 12 to Season 13)
In: Alexander Ovechkin (waiver), Cam Fowler (free agent), Brandon Montour (trade), Michael Matheson (trade), Jordan Binnington (free agent), Radek Faksa (trade)
Out: Steven Stamkos (free agent), Dmitry Orlov (free agent), Drew Doughty (free agent), Frank Vatrano (free agent), Tyson Barrie (trade), Nicolas Aube-Kubel (trade), T.J. Brodie (free agent), Adam Lowry (trade), Thomas Spelling (free agent), Michael Hutchinson (free agent)
Potential Lineup
Max Domi/John Tavares/Anthony Mantha
Jonathan Drouin/Mathew Barzal/Dmitrij Jaskin
Alexander Ovechkin/Sean Monahan/Tobias Rieder
Max Jones/Radek Faksa/Emil Benstrom
Sami Vatanen/Cam Fowler
John Marino/Brandon Montour
Cody Ceci/Michael Matheson
Juuse Saros/Jordan Binnington
Three Questions
1. Did free agency lead to a crumbling of the Lisbon hockey team? We will answer that in a couple of sentences: They lost a lot of good players. They will be a really good team this season. Bonus sentence: They will also be fun to watch. On the surface, it looks as though the team’s defense corps was decimated by free agency. More on that later. First, goaltending. Getting Jordan Binnington into the fold to share the goal crease with Juuse Saros was a wonderful move. They will give Lisbon a good shot at a W every game. Saros was a key player in the playoffs for Lisbon because they are a full steam ahead-type of team. He was often asked to bail out his teammates who were caught up ice trying to generate that extra bit of offense. His backup is a year older at 27, and although Binnington got very little playing time in Moscow and Oslo the last two seasons, he is a good goalie with a real competitive streak. Hayden Hawkey, the backup goalie for the last 7 seasons in Portugal and a guy teammates really liked, may not get too many games this season.
2. Didn’t the defense take a major hit in the off season? Of last season’s seven defensemen, only Sami Vatanen, John Marino and Cody Ceci remain. The scary part is that the team’s top three scoring blueliners all left through free agency or trades. But GM Bryan Camara managed to find virtual clones to take their place this season. Cam Fowler, who logged 964 games in Stockholm, is the leader of the unit now and he has the offensive skill and savvy to make up for the loss of Dmitry Orlov. Newcomer Brandon Montour had a bit of an off year in Helsinki in Season 12 but he will be very similar to the guy Lisbon just traded away, namely Tyson Barrie. And while Camara didn’t find an equal match to Drew Doughty, Michael Matheson comes in and he’s a better skater, a little better defensively, and 7 years younger than Doughty. Which leads to a slight problem the team might have. Or should we say “had.” Doughty, Orlov and Steven Stamkos all had leadership qualities the team was sorry to lose. But late in the process, Camara was able to coax a big name veteran to play for Lisbon and fill that leadership void. Alexander Ovechkin, with his dynamic personality, star power and drive, was signed to add qualities that younger Lisbon players just couldn’t provide. He will be a left wing on the third line with Sean Monahan and we expect he will also see some powerplay time because he’s Alexander Ovechkin and, well … read on.
3. Where does Lisbon need to improve most? Lisbon went from dead last to 5th place in a season, which tells you they really had a working solution in place last year. Penalty killing was a big part of that. They ranked second in the league behind Paris. The powerplay? Really bad (third worst in the EURO). When you consider they only had the two of the best powerplay guys you can think of (John Tavares and Steven Stamkos), their performance was especially disappointing and it might have cost them some points in the standings and wins in the playoffs. And now Stamkos is gone. The pressure will really be on Head Coach Barry Trotz to find a way to make man advantage opportunities count. Having creative and dependable Cam Fowler on one of the points will certainly help, but Lisbon fans might get really cranky if talented people like Tavares, Sean Monahan, Mathew Barzal, sniper Anthony Mantha and Max Domi fail to produce while the opposition is shorthanded.
Rose’s Focus
“I’m not going anywhere, but could you imagine the commissioner’s face if I told him I was leaving the job? It would be just a mix of sweat and hair. I imagine that to be the face of many Lisbon fans right now – men mostly – now that Steven Stamkos has left the only franchise he’s every played for. Stamkos is in St. Petersburg. Hard to believe. So what poor sucker gets to try to fill Stamkos’ shoes/skates? Anthony Mantha: 28 years old, big and strong, powerful and accurate shot … looks good so far … not as good a skater as Stamkos and not nearly as good a passer or defensive player. I would not want to be Mrs. Mantha after games this season. “Mom, nobody likes me.” “Mom, they called me names.” Maybe I’m wrong and Mantha will come storming out of the gates, turn John Tavares passes into goals and make fans forget Stamkos. Mantha scored 23 goals and 61 points last season in a second-line role, so those numbers will go up. But he has his work cut out for him this season.”
