With how the teams been playing as of late plus the injuries, at this rate just get Stolarz into a lot of these games. Give bob a softer workload heading into the playoffs. No need for him to stand on his head and collect L’s and potentially hurt his self esteem.
Sucks how they’ve been playing lately but I think it’s a conscious thing on their part. They experienced what it’s like to go through the grind to make it to the final. And other than round 1 those weren’t even long series. Only lost 4 games total by the time they made it and they were still dead. Like last season, I have no expectations come playoff time. I’m just here to observe and see how it unfolds. But I am optimistic that they know what they’re doing, they know the game they need to and can play and the effort that it’ll take. Get everyone fairly healed and I do believe they can turn the switch when needed.
And please play tank on line 3, we need depth scoring. Which is the main reason I don’t see a cup in the near future. Guys like Lundell, Loustarinen, and Rodrigues can’t be relied on to score goals. More like a pleasant surprise if it happens. Same with the entire 4th line. Hell, even Bennett hasn’t scored a whole ton and Nick Paul currently has more goals than Barkov does. Thank god Reinhart went supernova. I like our top end guys but our bottom 6 can’t be relied upon to score goals. Only half our offense seems to be able to and that’s not good enough. If they do ever win it all it’ll be because 3 lines will be clicking and the 4th will let their presence be known. I’m not even opposed to having 2 of our 6 better forwards on each of the top three lines in an effort to make us deeper. Barkov and Reinhart with erod. Tkachuk and Verhaeghe with Lundell. Bennett and Tarasenko with luostarinen. I’d be curious to see how that would work but I also don’t want to tinker too much at this point in the season. I’m fine with tank with the two black holes atm
