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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
You're kidding yourself. Every team has injuries.
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True. And when the injuries all pile up at the same position, it hurts more than when they are spread throughout the lineup. When your #1 defenceman is ineffective because of surgery and your #2 is not playing at all, it makes a lot more difference than having two random guys out.
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Every team has important players adjusting to a new system at the beginning of the season.
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No, not every team. Most teams play fairly similar defensive systems. Hartley's system is an outlier because he, and only he, relies heavily on the defencemen to generate offence on the rush. No other team in the league calls upon its D for that much of its attack.
Hamilton had only ever played for Julien, whose systems are much more conventional. For a 22-year-old kid on his second NHL job, it was a big adjustment. It wouldn't have mattered so much if he had been brought in as a third-pairing defenceman – but he had to play big minutes right away while Brodie was out, and he wasn't up to it.
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Every team has streaks of bad play.
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True. But not every team has a streak where their differential is –25 in one month.
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This team has the worst special teams in the league.
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Power play I'll give you. Penalty kill, once again, a lot of that comes right back to goaltending.
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This team has among the worst team defence in the league.
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That happens when you haven't got goaltending.
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This team has only one scoring line.
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And yet is above average in goals scored – even counting the games since the deadline. No, boys and girls, Johnny Hockey's line has not been scoring 2.7 goals per game.
That's a disadvantage, to be sure.
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This is a bad team with a promising young core.
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And yet this is a team that set a franchise record for consecutive home wins, and had an even goal differential after their top defence pair got back to work in November. Were there areas of concern? You bet your boots. Are there gaps in the lineup, things that need to be fixed? Of course. This is what makes them below average.
But the only reasons, the
only reasons, that they are in the toilet bowl with Edmonton and Toronto are (1) they started the season without an acceptable goalie and with half their defence not functioning, and (2) they are finishing with their only acceptable goalie out for the year and several key players traded away for futures. It's a very bad team now. Before the deadline, it was merely mediocre.
You appear to think that when two people disagree about how bad a situation is, the person who thinks it is less bad is kidding himself. Well, I can tell you that when one person thinks the sky is falling and the other one doesn't, the person who is kidding himself is the one who thinks it is.
You can go ahead and moan, bitch, and whine in despair, if that's how you get your kicks. But kindly don't go lobbing insults at those of us who choose to keep leveller heads.
