Hedman is so mad that JBB didn't bring back his best friend he signed an extension, what a hero.
He can still be upset, but yeah, deciding to change your whole future by going somewhere else wasn't going to happen either.
It can still cause a rift between the locker room and management. It still takes a voice out of the locker room that was crucial to getting the team to commit to work ethic and sacrificing the body, and doing whatever have to to get the win.
Victor is one of those guys too but the more of those voices you have the better. It of course is never one guy but the % is going down, by how much I don't know. It seemed there were some feelings that certain individuals, probably new faces to the team, that weren't getting the message of how things are done in Tampa, by the end of the year.
And to hell with the new system we tried this past year - what's the feedback loop on that? The team defense as a whole took a nosedive, and that somehow doesn't equate to those changes? Is McDonagh coming back to the system they had that worked or this new structure? Is the coaching staff going to make adjustments after seeing the actual results on the ice, or push that this structure can and will work.
Vasilevskiy should be able to help bail out defensive struggles unlike last season, unless he's had some permanent changes to his mobility from his back injury.