The trend for the team is upwards and has been for several seasons now, and I do expect them to surprise the more pessimistic fans/media narratives. There for sure a lot of positives to look forward too, I was just pointing out that Caufield isn't automatically fully healthy and back to being a 40-50 goal scorer because he finished the season with 8 goals in 10 games, or that Gallagher will be a good 3rd line winger for us because he was a ppg for the final 10 games, or that Armia has figured things out and will be consistent because he had good stretch of games.
I think the biggest improvements we will see is special teams. As MSL transitions from a near total focus on development to actually caring about winning games I think he'll be less tolerant towards bad/lazy penalties and he'll spend more time during practice on special teams.
We spent the 4th most time in the league on the PK, being more disciplined not only means less time on the PK meaning less GAs, it likely also means an improved PK since guys will be more rested in game plus the aformentioned practice time. In terms of PP, similar story line, and one thing I'm going to be following is whether Dach and Slaf can start to really draw penalties, with their combination of size, speed, and cycling I can really start to see them drawing lots of penalties due to their combination of size, speed, and cycling.