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Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

Right now, they’re 9th in Goals against and 24th in Goals For.

If they’re going to be a bottom-10 offensive team, they’d better be comfortably in the top-10 for goals against, probably top-5, if they’re gonna make the playoffs.

Yes, the PP and PK can’t get much worse.

But they can stay this bad. Unless Kuzmenko and Sharangovich figure something out in a hurry, the powerplay is going to remain lost, because there remains no true offensive catalyst on this team.

They’ll still need to play Vladar every 4th night to showcase him until the deadline. He’s probably not giving up one goal a night.

They will sell Kuzmenko + whoever else, and those spots will be filled with AHL callups who will probably score more but won’t be experienced enough defensively to overcome veteran teams who are gearing up for playoffs.

Wolf’s gonna win them games this year they shouldn’t. Tonight, for one.

But they give up the 7th most shots per game. I don’t see them improving much in this area because it’s so hard for them to carry the play. So few of the guys on this team are comfortable with the puck on their sticks for more than a second.

Backlund, Kadri, Zary… that’s basically it. I don’t understand why nobody knows how to protect the puck or box a defender out, or why they all stop skating as soon as the puck lands on their stick.

If they can hold it together, cool. I’m not rooting for them to fail, I just don’t think a roster that drafted 9th overall last year can run it all back + Dustin Wolf and achieve a vastly different result.

I’m there with you. So far they have exceeded my expectations. I think that the goaltending has been much better than expected. The defence is better than expected. The forwards are worse than I expected. I just don’t get how people can harp on coaching when two out of three positions are doing better than expected. This team shouldn’t be in a playoff spot in November, much less a division spot. Some part of that success is coaching.