True, but it's no different for all other teams as well. Injuries to key players would impact their success. I might argue that because of the Canes system, they might be less susceptible to individual injuries than other teams, many who rely on individual performance.
The concern for me is that Defense has been our strength and I'm not sure how this D corps will perform.
That’s a fair point and I don’t think a catastrophic scenario
will play out, but it definitely
could play out. And despite the one-for-all system we run, I don’t look at this roster and see much room for error on injuries. Let’s say Aho misses 10 games for whatever reason, minor injury or whatever. Who the heck are our top 6 centers? Let’s say Burns is out for whatever reason, who’s our top RD? Walker or Chatfield? It’s just a lot shallower of a roster than it used to be, which puts a huge spotlight on the health of a handful of top-of-the lineup guys (and also on their performance, as we need those guys to play like stars even more than we used to).
I don’t think it’s crazy to look at what we’re calling a 110 point team which lost at least 10 points of talent off the top, think “what does this look like if things break badly for them?”, and see them in the low 90s. Again that wouldn’t be my prediction but it’s not an absurd prediction.
Is Wysh's season prediction predicated on there being major injuries to key players? No. It's based on our 111 point team dropping more than 20 points in the standings because of our offseason changes. Walker and Ghost instead of Skjei and Pesce, and Turbo and 1/4 of a season worth of Guentzel leaving. Are those changes on their own going to lose us 10 games?
And your example even makes the opposite point- if we've reached stratospheric levels in the standings the last few seasons *even with several major injuries to major players*, that suggests that our roster is deep and resilient enough to weather a fairly normal level of injuries. You can never rule out a black swan event, but you can't make predictions based on them, either.
We took a step back, sure. But the idea that we're going to go from 111 points to fewer than 90 points based on this offseason is simply not an argument worth taking even remotely seriously. It's overdramatic bullpucky. I know we all love to melt down and overreact to any minor loss, or even a win where we don't look good, but this team was a 1-0 game against the Rangers and a game we effectively didn't contest away from being the absolute best team in the regular season last year. We took a hit, but if you think that that's going to drop us out of the playoffs, you genuinely need to get a grip. Wysh included.
For context, Wysh’s article was a list of “bold” predictions for each team. He does that article every year and the idea isn’t to speak to probability, but plausible possibility.
If any fanbase knows better than to think they’re an automatic playoff team because of what happened
last year, it’s us. The lack of competition in this division will help, but nothing’s gonna be automatic here. Any team can stumble and miss, look at last year’s Devils who thought they were going to be better than their 112 point season and ended up with 81. Shit happens in this league, we’re not immune.
