Figured I'd respond to Hackey's 2014-15 concerns one by one:
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Originally Posted by Hackey
Exactly. Do the players buy in the way they did last year?
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I would say so.
The reason is because we were in a big funk in that late Dec to mid Jan period where Gio was out and we couldn't buy a goal worth a damn; I'm pretty sure a lot of us were doubting Hartley.
But obviously the players had enough faith in him and the team managed to swing things around, so I'd say that trust would still be there - even with the new additions, and even if we hit a similar crap streak.
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Originally Posted by Hackey
Are games that much tougher because teams know what kind of style we play now?
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Probably not by much.
Teams knew that they had to put the effort in to beat us, they clued into that pretty fast when we took out some of the challengers in the West; the Sharks, Blackhawks, Wild.
Did it stop us from ####ting over Anaheim 7-2? Nah. And even in the rematch vs them a few weeks later we were giving them another big run for their money before a couple of bad luck bounces sunk us.
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Originally Posted by Hackey
Do certain players regress? Does someone emerge as our true starter? The west is absolutely stacked and even the bad teams improved. I could see this team being 14th in the West. If they do play well maybe a few spots higher.
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If Gio can stay healthy I feel like he should stay where he is. Glencross and Wideman had injury shortened seasons, so they're due to have a bounce-back season especially since Glencross is on his contract year. Now if they can stay healthy....that's another question.
The other core pieces; Monahan
might have a sophomore slump, but I don't think it'll be a significant one. The kid's pretty driven and worked very hard in the offseason - many posters here in the 2014-15 prediction thread predicted him to lead the Flames in goals, myself included.
Backlund; just stick the A on his jersey. Magic.
Brodie; he shouldn't 'regress', I think the full season playing on the top pairing did wonders for his confidence and development. He just needs to work on his shot, really.
As for goalies; well we somehow offloaded Berra for a 2nd, so no more worrying about back-breaking goals. Either one of Hiller or Ramo can take over for the other if one gets shaky, so overall our goaltending took a pretty big step forward in comparison to last year.