Drivesaitl
Time to Drive
Kane hasn't been an apex predator in years. Last time played he was around a .5ppg player and he was less interested in mayhem as well. Fact is he's a lot older, hasn't played for ages and even at that has played very little hockey in recent seasons.The Back-Up Plan.
Oil got good goaltending again which is the big takeaway. But little else with the power outage of their play drivers out of the lineup. Very underwhelming games from Hyman and Nugent Hopkins. J. Skinner in audition time also was way too quiet along with quick twitch Kapanen who shows speed & some puck skill but too often zeroes right across his stat line. Frederic looks like a missing ingredient with physical, hard ice play and some innate nasty.
Get this team healthy including another apex predator Kane and we'll see what they've got this season.
I think its a bit aberration to be thinking all the guys out are going to add a lot. Sure McD and Drai will. Ekholm might be less than 100% the rest of the way given how many times now he's been out long stretches. We saw today that even we've really added very little at deadline. Jones confirmed bust. Another confirmed still hurt.
People wanted to anoint that J Skinner had a complete turn around in season but any time he's facing tight checking he just disappears. As did all our offense today.
I'm a bit worried the whole club or a lot of it are thinking "wow when we get all these guys back" Not sure its the best kind of team thought out there. Not saying the team is thinking that, but performances like this lend some questions.
Fact of the matter is we have around 6-8 players in our roster that couldn't score in a brothel.