Failure of management not supporting the Hughes brothers with some sort of beef up front and on D. I guess they thought Meier was that but he is more of a ballerina than I thought. He also hasnt really played well since Trouba's pro bono rhinoplasty.
I think we are starting to see a change league-wide. Back when the league started going more towards speed, it was the smaller players who excelled. The larger guys just couldn't keep up as they played a certain way/style for 18-24 years before getting close to the NHL that it was impossible for them to play a new style that really leaned towards skill and speed. What we are now seeing is those bigger guys come back into the league again that have been developing to play in this new style of game for the last 10 years or so. There are going to be more 'unicorns' like Tom Wilson around.
That's not to say small players who can really skate won't excel but it may mean we see a bit of a reverting back to the norm where some of the smaller players need a bit more time to bulk up again before being inserted into the NHL lineup.
We can see this a bit with just the Rangers. Look at the Rangers team just after the lockout compared to the young players they have coming in now. Cuylle, Othmann, Rempe, Edstrom, Chmelar, Schneider. The training that the bigger guys are working with is making them more ready for the NHL game than in years past.
That's just my hypothesis but I think we see the league start to get bigger again.
