The biggest difference between the play you're seeing now and the play that sunk us to the bottom of the league is the goaltending. Our goaltending was atrocious in the first half of the season. That may somewhat be a product of an increased commitment to team defence, but no one can deny the number of bad goals that cost us at the worst times in the first 40 games.
Now that we're getting consistent, generally good goaltending, we're a .500 team or better.
As someone else mentioned, though, it's not going to get much better than we're seeing right now without a serious talent injection. Is Poirier/Klimchuk/Baertschi/Gaudreau enough? Considering probably at least 2 of those 4 won't amount to much (just on odds), I don't think so. Is the guy we draft in the top 6 this season enough on top of that? Maybe. But probably not.
For this group to become an actual contender, all four of the guys mentioned would have to turn into top 6 players and our first rounder this year needs to turn into a star. That's pretty unlikely.
So we're still a few pieces and a few development years away.
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