[Sylvanfan]

Not a great game, but the second period and back half of the first was good. Still annoying to give up a shorty to tie the game...I don't like any team that's as bad as this one is at letting teams with an empty net score on you...while you can't score on the empty net.

I think the whole Canadian Division really is a collection of 6 teams who would be between the 14 to 22nd best teams in the entire league...plus Ottawa.

Toronto is off to a hot start, but who know's if they'll keep it up. Montreal is a bit like the Flames in that they have depth, but I think they have even less high end scoring than the Flames do. Winnipeg at this point is one game better than Calgary so the two teams are pretty close. Edmonton has high end scoring and lacks everything else. Vancouver at this point is in a pretty bad hole that climbing out is going to be pretty tough as they also lack useful depth. I actually expect now that they're pretty much dead that Ottawa will probably be play close to 500 now since they have no pressure and all their opponents do.

This is probably a bad year to be in line to get a good draft pick because there is a lack of data on the draft eligible players this year. If they were not willing to tear things down in the summer and chart a new course...than they might as well empty every bullet they have trying to make this group work. The one thing they have in their favor is that they only have three contracts after this year that have more than two years of term for guys over 30, and they might drop one in the expansion draft. All three of Tanev, Markstrom, and Backlund are still useful players, and Markstrom for me would still rate as a top performer in his position group. So cap wise the team has a lot of future flexibility. What they don't want to do is hand out some bad deals to current core guys that drag on for another 5-6 years at painful numbers...like say San Jose.