Quote:
Originally Posted by HighLifeMan
Individually Jonathan Huberdeau is shooting and creating less for himself than he has at any point in his NHL career. So, yes. I would absolutely say that it's a deployment and systematic problem. You don't try and put the reigns on a 115 point player.
In my opinion the top line being as dominant as it was last year with three elite players playing at their absolute best's really masked the issues that Sutter's system has with goal generation. The Kings were also a "corsi" dominant team that struggled to score goals and were predictable to defend as well. That pattern is repeating itself. It's not a coincidence that Kopitar went from 52 point season - to a 92 point season after Darryl's departure.
Sutter is trying to recreate what made the Kings so successful a decade ago - but the issue with that is the game is far more reliant on pure skill now. The last time the Kings won the cup there was one player in the NHL with 90 or more points - while last season alone there was 16 players who hit that mark.
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I would say that there is nothing wrong with this Sutter system any moreso than there are huge problems with the way the Oilers play the game.
The bottom line is that the goaltending and defending need to be top 5. Special teams needs to be right up there as well, and the team needs to be able to be far more productive in terms of getting into the hard areas than they have been.