Grit vs. Skill In The NHL: How Do Coaches Play It?

We've been through this before, but it's worth re-hashing, especially in light of the madding crowd's affection for Craig MacTavish's acquisitions of "gritty" players. In the comments of Ryan's article on the Fraser acquisition, frequent commenter OilTastic answers my question about playing gritty players against Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau by not answering at all, instead, asking in return:

your comment makes it seem like you believe it’s a good idea to play Omark, Rajala and Hemsky against Marleau and Thornton, is this correct?

Given the question, it's worth looking at Patrick Marleau's most common opponents at even strength from 2008-2013, via Hockey Analysis, along with Marleau's Corsi/60 against east opponent over that time:

While there is an occasional player like Vern Fiddler on the list, not that Marleau's most common opponents are good players, rather than players from the gritty sub-category.

So, to answer the non-answer posed by OilTastic, if I had to choose between the lines of Joensuu-Jones-Gazdic and Omark-Rajala-Hartikainen to match against Patrick Marleau, I'd choose the latter every time, not because of grit, but because the latter three are better players than the former. Given the list of Marleau's most common opponents, NHL coaches choose to do the same almost every time.