The thing about the eye test for me is that it’s entirely subjective of what the individual fan wants to see and their own expectations, which may or may not be realistic.
When a lot of fans (generalising here) watch other teams, it’s often during the playoffs which gives a distorted look of how teams play. I like to think I watch a pretty even split of NHL games through the season, not just Flames vs whoever, and I can’t say the Flames look disproportionately lazy, or not ready, or mistake ridden, than any other team with our calibur of players. Maybe that’s just my own expectations at play, but if we’re talking about the “eye test” then I don’t know a team in the league that doesn’t fail it just as much as the Flames on a regular basis.
The thing is, if we were playing lights out every night, we’d be nearly undefeated. No team does that, it’s extremely rare. The last team I can even remember looking that good that often was the Hawks in the lockout shortened season.
Those expecting a lot more at the start of the season of any team are setting themselves for a degree of disappointment, imo.
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