Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaskal
Yes, but minutes played are also a big factor; Shattenkirk attests to this.
With Gio out, that's a massive workload that has to be replaced. The man was already playing 25+min a night. Hartley had Wideman and Russell eating up a lot more minutes than they'd been playing and it definitely affects their on-ice performance. If Ryan van Asten hadn't done such a great job conditioning the team, we might not have made it in. |
That's the biggest reason I'm excited for this next season. No more are your pairings going to be 30-25-5 in a game. You could essentially break it out evenly 20-20-20 now, and with the conditioning of the team that is going to be a very fast third period team.
I'm comparing it to the years Nash played with the Suns and all they did was run run run. With this defense essentially being the point guard they are just going to push push and push... Calgary might even be a better third period team then they were last year