Seeing this a lot from Leaf fans this year and I think there's a lot of squinting involved
- Squint and you might think Morgan Reilly is a #1 defenceman on a cup-winning team
- Squint and you might think Chris Tanev is a #2
- Squint and you might think Jake McCabe can anchor a 2nd-pair
- Squint and you can ignore how mediocre Oliver Ekman-Larsson has been for years in anything other than a sheltered role.
- Squint and you might think Benoit, Hakanpaa, Lillegren and Timmins represent good blueline depth
- Squint and you might think Woll and Stolarz represents a good duo in net
- Squint and you might think Craig Berube is going to transform the collection of kids and castoffs below the core 4 into the dead-puck era Devils
It's not impossible that some of these plans will work out, but that seems like a lot of squinting.
To this outsider, it really looks the same old Leafs: a good team with hyper-concentrated top 4 talent surrounded by too many questions marks elsewhere.