it was a good run, just not quite there. I thought Laviolette did a great job. I still remember his presser less than a year ago and he said the goal was just to "get to workin". He took a team that got bounced in the first series against the Devils last year and got them to play as a president's trophy team and to the ECF. He deserves some credit for that.
At this point, it comes down to Drury. I've read a lot of the takes here and I can say I agree with majority of the sentiments but I do tend to deviate from the idea that your best players have to be your best players. Of course you always want that but when I look at the stats, star players often underperform relative to what you expect from them in the playoffs. Star players get game-planned against, they often get double shifted to exhaustion, they often find themselves dealing with the playoff atmosphere of trap-like defense in the neutral zone, tight checking in their offensive zone and you have players sliding across the ice and throwing their bodies in most passing and shooting lanes virtually every shift. Not to mention, you definitely have to eat a hit if you want to try to get inside unlike the regular season.
Did Aho light us up? Between Reinhart, Verhaeghe, Tkachuk and Barkov, they really didn't score much across a 6 game series. Matthews, probably the best pure goal scorer in the league, his team can't get out of the first round. MacKinnon got I think like 4 goals across 11'ish games this past playoffs before his team got bounced. I don't think the narrative that star players often or need to score a lot of goals is accurate. Historically, there are many different archetypes of teams that have won the cup. It's multifactorial, there's more than one way for a team to get assembled and output a winning formula.
I'm not trying to defend Zib, but I also don't think if you turned him into a more offensive player, all of a sudden we win, nor do I think that should even be the biggest priority. I think Zib actually could be part of a winning team. I think what really hurt the Rangers was lack of depth scoring. Stars tend to underperform in terms of production in the playoffs, while unsung heroes and unsuspected players rise. There's a reason why this dynamic exists. We needed more from lines 3 and 4. Goodrow was amazing but other than him, we really got nothing. Even if we just got a few more goals sprinkled here and there from the bottom lines, the outcome could've been wildly different.
I think Drury's biggest fault here was not getting the proper bottom 6 arrangement. Also, stabilizing the defense would be right behind that. But I don't think ridding Zib off this team in exchange for a higher offensive guy (even if it were possible) does much to be honest. That next player will just get stifled like most stars do. That's a common theme in the playoffs. You need your depth to step up since they're not really getting game-planned.
Who scored goals 1 and 2 for the Panthers yesterday? the Bennets and Tarasenkos.
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