For all the talk of Vegas regressing or whatever, they always pointed to skaters who overperformed.
My feeling was different. After seeing the last 14 years of his career, why would anyone expect Fleury to keep up that level of play when it is by far the outlier? A career .913 goaltender is not going to suddenly turn into a .930 goaltender.
I wonder if there was a bit of a "revenge" factor at play. Or like, 23 guys trying to prove their former teams wrong for letting them go, and building a ton of momentum. I think now, maybe, after some success, that chip is no longer on their shoulder. I watched two periods of the Buffalo game and it didn't look good for them.