Quote:
Originally Posted by ricardodw
A lot went right as the young guys got a lot of opportunity and ice time.
The problem with that is winning.
Chicago's top 10 highest paid players missed a total of 64 games
Toews, Jonathan » 6
Kane, Patrick » 13
Sharp, Patrick » 4
Seabrook, Brent » 0
Keith, Duncan » 3
Hossa, Marian » 10
Bickell, Bryan » 23
Hjalmarsson, N. » 1
Oduya, Johnny » 5
Leddy, Nick » 0
The Flames highest paid 10 players missed a total of 205 games
Cammalleri, Mike 19
Wideman, Dennis »36
Giordano, Mark » 18
Hudler, Jiri » 8
Jones, David » 34
Stajan, Matt » 19
Smid, Ladislav » 9
Ramo, Karri » 15
Glencross, Curtis » 44
Brodie, T.J. » 1
Chicago had 107 pts -- an 18 pt clearance on the 9th place team.
Would the impact of losing 141 more man-games out of their core been worth 9 wins.... The Flames had Wideman play 22 games with a broken hand as well ie do the Hawks make the playoffs with Seabrook and Kieth missing the same amount of games as Wideman and Gio?
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First, let's just ignore that for some reason you left off Corey Crawford (who might be one of the more important players on their team) and his $6M salary, yet included Ramo. Crawford missed at least 10 games due to a back injury in Dec/Jan and including him would have bumped Nick Leddy and his 0 games missed off his list.
But to your question...no...I don't think the Blackhawks would have missed the playoffs if they had an extra 141 man games lost due to injury. It sounds like a lot but that's an average of each guy missing about one more game each at some point during the year. On a good team like the Hawks, they have the depth to battle through it. Sure, it may change the outcome in 1-2 games...but to drop their yearly win total by 20% and say they'd fall out of the playoffs is crazy!