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Bobby Ryan’s position shuffle moves him back to left wing

Bobby Ryan

Anaheim Ducks right winger Bobby Ryan warms up before facing the Colorado Avalanche in the first period of an NHL hockey game on Wednesday, March 25, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

AP

Bobby Ryan’s preseason of intrigue takes yet another turn, this time a predictable one. While Ryan was being tried out at center to attempt to give the Ducks three strong centers with Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan, and Saku Koivu, it appears that head coach Randy Carlyle didn’t like the way things were going and will move Ryan back to left wing. Only difference this time is he won’t be on the wing with Getzlaf and Corey Perry, according to the Orange County Register’s Curtis Zupke he’ll be riding shotgun with a couple of old guys.

The idea was that Ryan, the team’s leading goal scorer last season, could use his playmaking skills up the middle of the ice and help give the team depth at center with Ryan Getzlaf and Saku Koivu able to fill out the other center spots on the top three lines.

Carlyle is apparently wavering from that idea, though, because he had Ryan back at his natural left wing position Thursday, with Saku Koivu at center and Teemu Selanne on his usual right wing spot.

“It’s not that we’re throwing it out the window,” Carlyle said of the experiment of Ryan at center. “We put him back at left wing for now and we’ll see how that develops.”

All right so he’s still tinkering and that’s good, but if you’re going to put Ryan at center, letting him continue to hone his game at that position throughout the preseason would seem like the right idea. After all, you don’t want a guy to be feeling his way through things during games that count in the standings. Then again, I’m not the NHL head coach here and Randy Carlyle is, so maybe I should shut my face about this.

Still, having Ryan playing on the same line with Koivu and Selanne sounds like a perfectly acceptable solution as well. With Matt Beleskey getting his shot to run with Getzlaf and Perry, loading up one line with all your scorers on a team that’s not offensively loaded comes off as risky. Figuring out a way to spread the wealth is the right move for Anaheim, but with the amount of guys they’ve got that can put the puck in the net they don’t have a lot of options to make it work.