Quote:
Originally Posted by gvitaly
^ I don't see either the Ducks or Sharks climbing out of the basement this year.
The main reason is that their Cs aren't world beaters defensively, and when you combine that with a relatively weak D core, and an inexperienced #1G for the Sharks, then you get one of the worst GAs in the league. At the same time the Ducks had the 3rd worst offense last year, meanwhile the Sharks had the worst offense, so they would both need their forwards to take a huge step this year.
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I am not so sure you can be certain in evaluating their forward's defensive prowess based on the last few years. The Sharks have good talent up front but they had garbage D and terrible goaltending. Even if the forwards played their defensive positions perfectly, the puck was going into their net.
This year they have three big assets ready to graduate.
Askarov - The Sharks' version of Wolf
Dickinson - Their version of Parekh (OHL Dman of the year)
Mukhamadullin - Another 1st round pick Dman (from the Devils in the Meier trade)
Throw in Orlov, Klingberg, and Leddy and you have some vets that can help make that D group suck less. If they add Andersson then that is very close to replacing the entire D group from last year and one could argue they would be at least "NHL calibre". But they cannot take that step with Liljegren or Klingberg as their #1RD.
If the young D play well enough that they can trade Ferraro for a middle 6 winger then that might help too, but really they could just promote one or two of Misa, Musty, Bystedt, Graf, Lund, Chernyshov, Halttunen
With a somewhat decent D group in front of him, Askarov has a chance to come in as hot as Wolf did last year. It could cause some chaos in the division and if it lowers VGK in the standings then that is good for us.