But you were so adamant that this team would take a step forward this year? There's hundreds of posts from you this summer saying we're not a bottom-5 team anymore.
Hughes took the team from worst in the league in 2021 to worst in the league in 2024
We shouldn't be a bottom 5 team anymore - but if that is what happens this year, oh no, we've added another top 5 pick to the organization.
I also said that I expected them to shift to the 8-12 range, by no means was I projecting this team the playoffs.
You know how many points we are away from being 8th in the draft? 4 points.
This is what rebuilds are, we expected and hoped Slaf would take the back half of his season and build on it to start this year. He has not to this point but still remained fairly productive despite his struggles and eventually he will pick it back up.
Dach's struggles have taken longer to correct after the injury that we expected. That's hurt.
Laine hasn't played a shift. That immediately put a damper on things.
Someone said it before, but the expectation seems to be like a video game, you earn experience points, you get better and you never crater. It's rarely like that. There's gonna be a stretch of highs and a stretch of lows, we are seeing the lows off the start of the season so it optically looks worse than it is.
There are concerning things with Marty that I won't dodge at all but the alternatives are much worse than seeing if he can develop as a coach, there's no panic here to push things forward and risk ending up like the Detroit Red Wings with a stretched cap table on a bunch of new mediocre UFA depth forwards and defenseman.
We've graduated 2 players from the rebuild so far.. and one of them had 50 points as a 19 year old, the other is in the conversation for the calder this year.
You guys are looking at our rebuild from a micro shift to shift level and looking at every successful rebuild from a macro level. I guarantee you, they all went through things like this.. the only team that didn't created a core so soft and wilting in adversity, they're a laughing stock known as the Leafs.
I'd much rather this group of players find their way through the adversity, or weed themselves out now, versus becoming the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I'm also glad we aren't doing the Detroit Red Wings thing and playing in the mid UFA market to artifically push things into no man's land.