GDT: #8 ⋅ ANA @ NJD ⋅ 4:00 PM PDT

[HanSolo]

It was apparent last season the offense was a dud, but too many people kept saying "the injuries, the injuries" like they were mimicking Tattoo from Fantasy Island, "De plane, de plane!" Same system, new season, same result. Cronin is waiting in individual effort to shine through in sparse moments for his offensive system.

TBF, we looked better later in the 3rd period because Cronin reverted back to his old lines that did work vs the Rangers. We see the difference in SOGs in the third period. Still, the offense remained missing in action.

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Another point of concern that some of us brought up when we traded away Rico and Carrick was, "How are we going to win FO's now when we lost two out of our top-3 FO specialists?" We are currently ranked 32nd in the league. The more we lose at the FO circle, the less time we have of puck possession. Less puck possession time means we aren't getting better offensively.

Yeah the injury excuse is dead. The first year with a new coach excuse is dead. This was the year for Cronin to prove he's at least capable and early returns are shit. Especially after admitting he took the hands off the wheel for the last 20 games to "learn" what the players would do if left to their own devices and "learn" what they needed from him as a coach. It seems that was just 20 games utterly wasted.

And yeah, we're not only dead last in faceoffs, we're a whole 2% worse than the next worst team. When you're getting into league wide degrees of separation, that's enormous.