Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
People want to point to Andersson, or Wolf, or any one piece as the difference between where we are and the absolute basement, but the system spreads out so much responsibility and there is such a a commitment to team defence that it ended up far greater than the sum of its parts, and because of that, no one player is that big of a difference maker on their own.
This isn’t a team being held together by one or two star players. It’s a generally low-skilled, hard working team where on any given night a fourth liner can have a bigger impact than the entire first line.
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At the deadline the flames were only 4 points ahead of the 10th worst team. No one here is claiming Andersson is a star, however it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that trading a defenceman of his skill level could have been a swing of ~2 wins. Not exactly a big jump.
Also I’m only going off my eye test, but this team didn’t look particularly strong defensively. Naturalstattrick sort of backs up what I saw, flames mostly ranked middle of the pack in most high danger against categories.