I apologize if the following content has been discussed on one of the copious Shea Weber stories already posted on BSH. The thought, I must admit, of reading through close to 1,000 comments after an eight hour work day, however, is not all that appealing.

If the Nashville Predators decide to not match the Flyers offer sheet, although, personally, I think there is no way they let #6 walk, Shea Weber will indisputably become the Flyers #1 D-Man. This is stating the obvious. For the sake of this article, though, we are operating under the assumption that Shea Weber will indeed be wearing orange and black come (hopefully) October.

Once Weber is officially a Flyer, thought will shift to, among other things, the make-up of the D-pairs. After some thought, and a huge assumption that Andrej Meszaros will be dealt, my initial pairings were as follows: Weber-Timonen, Coburn-Grossmann, Schenn-Gervais.

As I continued to ponder the Flyers defense corps, a hypothetical situation popped into my brain: what IF Luke Schenn impresses the coaching staff enough to warrant top-4 minutes? Again, after some rumination, I settled on the following pairs: Weber-Coburn, Schenn-Grossmann, Timonen-Gervais. These pairings, albeit based on a huge IF, would allow Timonen to log less even strength minutes, thereby, in a perfect world, allowing him to be fresher for the playoffs.

This is a somewhat verbose way of asking the following question: