Quote:
Originally Posted by Icantwhisper
While I would like us to do better points wise next year, part of me thinks that retooling's/rebuild (whatever this is) seldom see a upward trend year over year.
Most teams see a "saw blade" for points totals in the 3-5 years they are trying to retool, think last year might have been a year where a lot of things went perfect and might be hard to repeat next year.
Guess we'll see but my expectations are tempered, we've all seen teams add players that make them look better on paper and then it just doesn't work for whatever reasons.
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It's possible for sure. If you set the over under on points for this team next year at 96 I'd take the under. Finishing in that 85 to 95 point range, seems more likely than in that 97 to 105 point range.
Conroy says he doesn't see them picking bottom 5, but TBH I think it's more that they are very unlikely to get a top 3 pick.
Finishing bottom 3 in the league is tough in the modern era, on average you need to finish about .425 or lower to finish bottom 3, which is sub 70 point season.
In order to finish bottom 3 you really need to intentionally be bad and really go scorched earth on a re-build.
But I do think that they could legitimately finish anywhere from 29th OV to 14th OV - that's just how much parity there is in the NHL, and I think with a rising cap we see even more teams in that range trying to add and take a step next year.
Look at Boston - on Feb 1st they were 16th in the NHL, they ended the season 28th OV.
Will be interesting to see what happens next year but I wouldn't write off a scenario where they do end up picking top 10 but not top 3.