[browna]

Toss in COL and ROR. Thinking they'd have their top young center in the lineup would change their fortunes this year when they matched the Flames offer. Instead, they got no better standings wise with him, and they could've had two top 8 picks in this draft.

In general, the worst "choice" was the players not signing the deal at the beginning of Decemeber when they were close and Bettman had that epic press conference. The gains for the players were marginal in January, and then the result of that, only a few days around the league as training camp, no exhibition games, killed a lot of players and teams for not having that preparation/conditioning time.

Cam Ward gets hurt early in Carolina, and him along with Kipper are Exhibit A. Kipper previously took the pre training camp skates back in town and then training camp and exhibition games, to get into shape. There was none of that, and sure enough, he got injured of a significant nature, for the first time in 9 years. By the time they sorted out who was going to be in net full time, and that guy got comfortable, 10+ games (1/4 of the season) had passed.

Other players I am sure all around the league never got the rust off and are nowhere near playing to their abilities, especially those needing to have great seasons to carry their teams as the best case scenario. Toss in coaching staffs that were unprepared (Sacco?), and the fact that games were suddenly worth 3.4 points, not just 2, had teams behind early and motivation and everything went downhill quick on many teams.