Middle of the pack statistics put them as a bubble team, which is where they find themselves. With how close the standings are they really need to finish in a division spot and not rely on wild card, and home ice is critical for matchups, so they better shoot for 1 or 2, which are achievable if they pick it up a bit.
Good news is they are in the mix despite an uneven first quarter and surely they have more to give. I can't imagine the PL stays that bad - they were decent last year though I wonder if they miss Bouma, Chaisson or a younger Stajan. No one shed a tear when those guys left but it's hard to see that the current bottom 6 and PK are better.
Key thing to work on is goals against. Forget fancy stats, the single best predictor of team success is goal differential. If they don't turn that around big time they will be pretenders no matter what their record is.
It's getting time to make some hard decisions on the bottom 6. A quarter of the way through and those 8 guys have less than 10 goals combined???
Where does the team go with Bennett? After some promising signs he's back to not contributing and found himself on the 4th line last night. There's slumping and then there's this. If there's not a marked improvement by mid-season I think they have to look at shipping him out for mutual benefit.
Lazar is not contributing, time to take a chance and swap him wth Hathaway or Mangiapane. Lazar has honestly done nothing to warrant a spot since he was acquired.
Jagr to me looks old and slow. Still wiley and talented but I wonder if this experiment will fizzle out later this year. Hope not.....
D needs to get it's act together - mostly second pairing. Partner-swapping might be in order, and dealing back Brodie's responsibilities. I always thought PP time was in part a reward...maybe take that away for a bit?
More reasons for optimism than for panic, I don't think we've seen the best of this team yet.
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