With Kovy out, we don't have a single player that creates space for themselves on the ice
Every guy we have, most of which are plugs that play similar games, are guys that play their games along the boards and we're literally on the outside of the play looking in a majority of the time
It is sickening seeing us play most of every game chipping and passing along the boards, thats how bad things are, we can't even make open ****ing ice passes
You need guys like we have on your team, but not the high number of them that we have which is pretty much most of our lineup
agreed, i hope this year finally proves the importance of forwards like semin and pmds (yeah i know, the magical pmds).
say what you will about players like that, but without them, you can't score consistently. you need d-men that can take control of the puck and make quick, receivable passes or carry it out of the zone. you need forwards that can pick corners and actually end up with the puck in the slot more than once a week.
our d-men outside of zidlicky and sometimes greene, harrold and tallinder are flat out laughable with the puck. none of them can make accurate passes, none of them can skate it, and none of them besides zidlicky, greene, and harrold show any kind of offensive instincts or creativity in the o-zone. larsson and fayne should at least be good at the first two, but they haven't been able to stay in the lineup long enough to get in a groove. harrold doesn't have the decision making to be in the lineup as a d-man every day, and tallinder is a similar story to fayne and larsson.
then on the rare occasions we get control of the puck in the offensive zone, we just ring it around the boards a couple of times and then cough it up. our forwards hardly ever break free inside the faceoff dots or in the high slot and even when they do nobody has the skill to get a pass to them. even if by some miracle they do, they end up shooting it right into the goalie's crest.
we have plenty of good complementary players, but we're missing one or two more impact scorers. be they wingers or d-men or what have you, that lift all those players up. that's why we can never score, that's why we jump on guys like clarkson or zajac whenever they aren't scoring, and that's why we probably aren't making the playoffs this year.
we don't have to get another parise, but a more well built d-corp (read keep greene and zidlicky, make harrold the extra again, let fayne and larsson play every day, and limit the guys that are useless offensively like salvador and volch to one) and another true top 6 scorer or two, someone you know you can get ~30/30/60 from, would go a long way towards that.
unfortunately that might take another season or two to pull off.
