I think this is an excuse and a bad take by Fitz.
And I kind of disagree completely.
Who is he calling depth scoring?
Noesen had 22 goals, Mercer had 19 goals, Cotter had 16 goals, Palat had 15 goals the most he's had as a Devil.... Haula had 11 maybe a little off from his high of 16 with us two years ago but really? Was Fitz expecting more from this group? BS.
Is he talking about Tatar with 7? Bastian with 4? Or Lazar with 2 in 48 games?
I don't think he's talking about the 4th liners? Would kind of be silly to.
Meier and Bratt and the injury to Jack are the short falls in the goal department Fitzy. Stop playing games and tell the truth.
I don't think your point is wrong necessarily, but we finished 20th in scoring on the season and it's clear that at a certain point this year when goal scoring dried up, it wasn't going to come from anyone but the top guys. The inconsistencies piled up, especially in the 2nd half of the year. I know saying Bratt doesn't score enough goals is your most recent MO, but he produced enough points to finish 15th in the league in scoring. I think he is warranted a pass. I have hope that Timo's finishing will improve because he is able to generate chances at a significant clip, and I have a hard time believing he can have another stretch of shooting 2% over a 20 game stretch again the way he did this year.
Do I have the same faith in Noesen to maintain his 1st half pace? Or is he closer to his 2nd half? I love the guy, but Noesen had 16 goals and 27 points in the first 40 games of the season. He had 6 goals and 14 points in the final 38. I'd like to hope Haula's bad stretch midyear was all injury related as mentioned before, but can we really be sure?
Mercer's production has decreased and become inconsistent the past two seasons. He has stretches where it clicks, and then longer stretches when it doesn't. He started the year with 2 goals and 3 points in his first 11. Then has back to back multipoint nights. Followed by 7 goals and 14 points in 36 games.
Cotter scored 7 goals and 12 points in his first 19 games. He finished with 9 goals and 1 assist in the final 60. Palat had to essentially be stapled to Jack and Bratt to be halfway productive offensively. Of course getting Jack back will help, but if you don't think a reinforcement or two scoring wise would be beneficial, I don't know what you think we need to do for this roster to improve then.
Not to mention we just finished a playoff series where the majority of the goals scored were involving our three main guys left, Nico, Bratt and Timo. It was quite evident there was no offensive punch if one of those three wasn't out there on the ice until Game 5. And even with that said, it wasn't coming from our bottom 6 forward group at all.
We scored 11 goals in 5 games. Only 3 of them did not involve Nico, Bratt or Timo. All Carolina had to do in this series was focus their attention on our top two lines. Our bottom 6 was not going to do any damage on their own.
