Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
This is a team that is a couple pieces short. The sky is not falling. This is a damn good mix of players. What is missing is not a generational talent like some #### show up the road was lucky enough to stumble into. What this team is missing is scoring RW and a short down defenseman. After that, its all on the coaching staff, which is abysmal in my estimation. This is the worst coached team in NHL and it is as obvious as the nose on Tim Hunter's face. This is a team that has the majority of the right pieces, but needs a few minor things to happen. They are close. Treliving just needs to make the right tweaks, which I am not sure he has the confidence to do.
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For this year, it's more than missing just a few pieces though. The pieces we do have aren't good enough yet (and that's not a slam on them, they aren't supposse to be).
For us to be a perennial playoff team and a true contender, yes I agree we need to fill in some of the gaps that you mentioned, but more importantly, many of us fans are taking the good peices that we have, most of which are under 23 and taking them too the bank going "we have the right pieces" and either panicking about a lack of performance from those pieces, or blaming the coaches for not getting the most out them.
Gaurdreau, Monahan, Bennett, Tachuck and Hamilton for example are hopefully the right pieces, but they aren't fully baked today. Expectations that they should be are rediculous. People all over Monahan because he's off to a slow start, questioning his future potential, people flipping out that in his second season Bennett hasn't established himself as a top centre in this league yet and people calling for Hamilton's head because his play is inconsistent, despite not having a real partner (until recently) every season as a Calgary Flame.
These likely are the right pieces, but they aren't ready yet. It's important for folks to come to terms with that, because although I think this team should be playing better this year, it's not that we didn't get the right UFAs to compliment, and it's far to early to know if we made a coaching decision error. It's that our best players still need to get better, which is all part of the rebuild, and does require patience.