Quote:
Originally Posted by moon
The Sens shouldn't be surprising at all. They had a ton of breaks last year and may have benefitted from the short season more than anyone.
Anderson wasn't close to as good as he was during his hot streak last year, they got a very weak Habs team in the 1st round that pretty much any team could have beat, they have a very weak forward group after Ryan and Spezza and while Karlsson scores a ton he gives up as much as he creates.
Throw in a moron owner and GM and it shouldn't be surprising the Sens are musing the play-offs this year.
|
This is your opinion, but I think you're kinda off on this one. I know they just added Hemsky to fill out the top 2 lines, but Michalek-Spezza-Ryan and MacArthur-Turris-Zibanejad score plenty of goals normally, but Michalek has had a bad year and the secondary guys like Greening and Smith have had a bit of a down year as well (or it's possible they weren't very good in the first place).
The problem is goals against, whether it's Anderson letting in a lot more than he did last year (and Lehner isn't doing a whole lot better, so it's probably not just goaltending), or the team defense commitment has fallen off, it's clear that you're not going to make the playoffs when you average over 3 goals against per game. That hasn't changed over the years. I will watch them again today, but it might just be the coach's methods have worn off and they aren't playing a disciplined team game the way they were the last couple of years. That's an easy fix but they still might have to make some moves in the off-season to get back to the playoffs.
To me the Senators are still a playoff team in a weak East, just having a bad year.