I was part of the "no panic" crew but I'm seriously concerned now. It's not just about losing games, it's that the majority of the times the team is unable to consistently move the puck from end to end and turtles out of necessity to survive until they have a shift where they can actually transition the puck to generate pressure. The bad starts lately I think is literally the team trying to not play on their own end, but being too slow and too clumsy when moving up the puck so they bleed high-scoring chances. Even the Toronto game, a little puck luck for the Leafs and we would've been down 2 or 3-0 at the end of the 1st.
Lankinen's good start and Hughes playing to a Hart level are masking the fact we've performed like a team fighting for the lottery for the last while and I honestly don't believe it's form, it's just that we have too many players that suck in a way that really hurts the rest of the roster - 4/6 defensemen can't get puck to forwards, smallish forwards have to grind it out vs bigger meaner oppponents instead of having possession and playing to their strengths. Too many holes and too few assets to fix this through trade I think, so we can only hope Tocchet can somehow get blood out of stone.