Hitchock's line combos theory
/St. Louis Blues bench boss Ken Hitchcock remains one of the best coaches in the league and he was asked about his approach to line combinations.
"It's always twosomes, not threesomes," Hitchcock said, via The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "So the twosomes never change, the threesomes do. That's the way I believe in doing things. That's the right way to do it. To me, thinking that threesomes are going to work for the whole season is unrealistic."
But do NHL coaches give threesomes enough time to gel?
"My experience, going through it at every level of competition, if it doesn't work, don't sit on it — it's a big mistake," Hitchcock said. "If it doesn't work early, it won't work later. It doesn't all of the sudden come around and they work it out. When you're working on chemistry at such an emotional level, you can tell right away. You can see fragments that work and you can build on it. But when it ain't working, get off it right away."