Welcome, dearest Internet friends, to another What Would You Do Wednesday (Thursday Edition), the article where I throw an Oilers-related question at you to see what kind of solutions you’ve got rolling around in your brains. With training camp underway, the first Oilers line combinations of the year are starting to roll out, and I want to know how you would put this roster together if Mike Babcock handed you the keys.

After spending the summer guessing how Mike Babcock would put his lines together, Thursday gave us our first look at what the coaches might be thinking in terms of personnel. Gregor posted the line combos as the boys hit the ice, and while nobody should be treating day one practice lines like they’re carved into our arms, but I did notice a few things worth digging into.

The obvious place to start is Vasily Podkolzin up on the top line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. While we all love the magic the Dynamic Duo can create when they’re together, having them together has been one of the biggest way-too-early lineup debates from this summer. Stan Bowman spoke recently about the pros of playing Connor and Leon together, and while we may not always agree, Mike Babcock unsurprisingly opened camp up by giving that trio a look. Whether it lasts beyond a couple of practices remains to be seen, but having Connor and Leon together again is always going to get people talking.

There’s obviously no concern about whether McDavid and Draisaitl can play together. We’ve got countless examples of those two making the game look easy, and it’s not at all surprising that the new coach would want to push the nuclear deterrent button. The real question is what loading 97 and 29 up does to the rest of the lineup. Do we have enough depth to pull this off? Even if Babcock floods them with minutes, they’re still only going to play roughly a third of the game, which leaves a pile of minutes for the other nine forwards to handle without either of the two best players on earth pushing the river.

What happens when those boys aren’t on the ice has always been the concern. The Oilers have been able to build one stupidly good line all they want, but the rest of the group still has to be able to make something happen without getting caved. And with Matt Savoie already injured and unavailable to start, that depth looks even more shallow as we draw nearer to the start of the season. All of a sudden, one of the youngsters we all hope can help to create secondary scoring consistently is already out of the mix, which makes the decision to load up McDavid and Draisaitl a little more interesting.

Outside of the first line, there were a couple of other things we should talk about. Ryan Shea opening camp beside Evan Bouchard is worth keeping an eye on because of how Bouchard has generally been stapled to Mattias Ekholm since the day he got here. Again, I’m not reading much into day one defensive pairings, but this is the time to try a few things and see if anything clicks before the big dance kicks off for real. Tristan Jarry being part of the first group is another one I’ll be watching closely after everything that happened last season. With Frederik Andersen injured and expected to miss some time, the crease is less crowded than everyone expected heading into camp, which gives Jarry and Devon Levi some leash to fight for the starting job.

Jarry needs a good camp after how horribly things went for him last year, while Levi suddenly has a much clearer path to actually playing some games with regularity. How will that work out? Only time will tell, but Andersen’s injury definitely throws an interesting wrinkle into the mix. But for the moment, having only two goalies puts more focus on Jarry and Levi while they have the crease to themselves.

The first thing that jumped out at me about group two was Isaac Howard skating with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman. If McDavid and Draisaitl are going to play together, this is exactly the kind of second line I needed to see because Hyman gives Nuge some help and familiarity, while Howard gets a pretty fantastic opportunity to show what he can do beside two established NHL players. We know Howard can shoot the puck, but we also know that he needs to become more useful when he isn’t scoring. Playing with Nuge and Hyman is a pretty damned good place to start figuring that out.

The other interesting trio in the second group is Trent Frederic with Jason Dickinson and Kasperi Kapanen, which is another line that could work or could fall apart very quickly. Frederic needs a bounce-back year in the worst possible way, and putting him with two experienced players gives Babcock a chance to see whether he can get more out of him than the four goals we got last season. Again, it’s the first day of camp and I’m not tattooing any of these combinations onto my face, but when you put both groups together, you can at least start to see how the staff might be thinking about spreading things out while Savoie is unavailable.

The defence was interesting too. Jake Walman is paired with Connor Murphy, while Mattias Ekholm skated with Shakir Mukhamadullin. Add Ryan Shea beside Evan Bouchard from group one, and suddenly we’ve got three pairings involving guys who could very realistically be part of the opening-night six. Again, I’m not suggesting those are the pairs we’ll see when the season starts, but with Nurse gone to San Jose, figuring out how Babcock wants to arrange the blue line is a massive plot point for the year, and this gives us our first real look at what he might be thinking.

In net, Devon Levi was with the second group, which feels about right given where things stand with Frederik Andersen on the shelf. We know Jarry and Levi are going to get the bulk of the work to start the year, and with only four pre-season games on the schedule, both guys are going to need to make the most of whatever starts they get. Needless to say, we can’t have another disastrous start to the season, and those two dudes will be a big part of making sure that doesn’t happen. Obviously there are a lot of changes coming, but what I can tell you for sure is that we are definitely going to have a different look this season, and I want to know how all of you feel about it.

Alright, dearest Nation Citizens, now it’s your turn. If Babcock handed you the whiteboard today, I want to know how you would build this thing? I want you to give me your vision for the ideal forward lines and defensive pairings. Are McDavid and Draisaitl together, or are you splitting them up to spread the offence around? If they stay together, who gets the third spot and what does the second line look like behind them? Who plays with Bouchard, and how are you sorting out the rest of the blue line? And with Frederik Andersen out, who are you starting on opening night between Jarry and Levi? That’s the ask, and I can’t wait to see how you build out your lineup.