It has clearly been a priority of Sheldon Keefe this season to find a trio of forwards capable of playing a shutdown role, drawing some of the matchup burden away from Tavares and Matthews lines while taking a high percentage of defensive-zone faceoffs.
Early on in the season, Keefe sampled a Mikheyev-Kerfoot-Hyman line, but Hyman’s value further up the lineup made it difficult to keep him on L3 consistently. Even when he started on the third line, he would often join Matthews and Marner at different points in the night, particularly in the latter stages of games.
Later on, the ‘HEM’ line (Mikheyev-Engvall-Hyman) came to be while Alex Kerfoot moved up next to Tavares.