I have no question that if the season wasn't toast that McLellan would have pulled Brossoit much earlier. Yeah we gave up momentum 3 times on not very good defensive coverage, but Columbus missed just as many defensive assignments tonight. The clear difference was goaltending, and the quick whistle on Kassian's no goal sure didn't help. Overall I think most people know what the issues on this team are. We have a couple guys playing higher than they should in the forward group due to Nuge and Pouliots injury, and a couple who are playing too high in the D group (and one or 2 who shouldn't be regulars) due to Klefbom's injury and issues we'll hopefully address this offseason.
At least the teams competing now, and with a healthy line up and a couple of offseason deals theres reason to have a positive outlook on this team. I know there's been a lot of false hope in the past, but this team has never had the centre depth, depth forwards who can actually play, or some of the defensive pieces on the back end, let alone a player who is likely going to be the best player in the game, in the last 10 years. People can say all they want "blah blah we've heard it all before for the last decade", but if people actually think that then they aren't paying attention.