Quote:
Originally Posted by DJones
Am I missing something? Gio wasn't there for the play-offs. After that Wideman and Stajan are the only noticeable differences.
Hamilton, Franson, plus the young guys developing seem like a massive improvement.
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Well assuming Poirer and Arnold aren't on the team this year, there are two rookies among the forward ranks. Franson is a considerable downgrade from Wideman considering how he played last year. Gio was the best defenseman in the world last year for 60 games, you can't discredit that.
The bottom pairing might be terrible considering we don't even know if either of those two guys will be NHL players at all.
And as good as Hamilton is, he is not on Gio's level from last year. Could he gets there? Maybe, but it's far from definite.
Basically that line up is banking a lot on young players developing into stars. I hope it happens, but that's a best case scenario. For me, the bottom 4 defense looks like it could cost the team a lot of games. Like I said, best case scenario that team is as good as last years, but that's only good enough to barely make playoffs.
One injury and you're bumping nakladal into your top 4 (which is already pretty suspect with Franson and Russell as your second pairing imo)