The Panthers' banner-raising will be interesting, as a good chunk of players from last year are gone.
Might be some emotion between competitors, as Elias Lindholm and Matthew Tkachuk were linemates with Johnny Gaudreau in Calgary when Johnny Hockey had his career year.
Korpisalo looked fine in pre-season, but none of that matters now.
The Bruins have gotten off to tremendous starts in recent years, but this might be the season that starts off bumpy.
I feel like you might be right. I haven't been able to see too much of this pre-season, but as far as I can tell, my sense is that the team is coming into the regular season quite under-done. Thankfully Sway is now signed but will surely take a little while to get up to speed, injuries and illness have limited the ice-time of the likes of Poitras, Marchand, E Lindholm and Jones, the best composition of the middle 6 remains largely unknown, the modified defense I feel is going to take a while yet to properly gel, unless you still count Poitras no kids have had a real breakthrough camp or frankly even close to it to give the team a boost, and scoring goals looks for all the world like it's going to be a problem at least initially.
BUT it's October, and that's ok. If the Bruins are a little behind where they normally are at this point it's not necessarily such a bad thing. It's a long season, plenty of time to sort things out. Can't drop too many early points, but don't want to peak too soon either. The struggle and journey are what make most of the great teams. So while there are some concerns, we just need to be patient and see how they play out. Would never bet against a Monty-managed team, the guy just knows how to win games, at least in the regular season. All may be well right from the starting gun after all. If not, we'll see what they're made of in battling their way upwards.
