How do you stop speed and skill? You hit it.
It will be like that for the rest of Hughes career. The game plan in the playoffs against Hughes will always be dump the puck into his corner and smoke him with a solid hit.,,,,over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over again till ya win the series.
we are OT but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much of a problem if hughes had had a partner he could feel safe passing it to instead of trying to skate it out on his own every single time and yes getting smoked repeatedly in the process. man hronek was bonkers bad in the playoffs.
but back on topic, i think the deadline is where this blueline really takes shape. just like 94, when we added brown and hedican (plus the underrated brian glynn off waivers) and traded away robert dirk and banished slegr and adrian plavsic to the press box. our third pair all year was some combo of dirk, slegr, and plavsic and all of a sudden all three were gone. we went into the playoff with lumme-murzyn, diduck-babych, hedican-brown and when murzyn got hurt glynn slid in.
my guess is we will rent a real top four RD to play with hughes, slide hronek down with soucy, and also rent a safe LD for the third pair with desharnais and myers splitting time with him.
longterm of course the hope is that something can be unlocked here with desharnais but i think it’s more a case of him slowly taking minutes from myers over the next two years and we’ll see if he is worth re-investing in when his deal is up.