Said it before, I'll say it again: before this year, the Rags were a good team masquerading as a great one. You can't play that weak 5-on-5 and just keep hoping your goalie and power play will bail you out every single time, season after season...not to mention how often they got lucky with injuries to opposing teams in playoff matchups in recent years. All it takes is one of those things going wrong for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. So many people treating them as elite the last few years are suddenly talking like they saw this coming all along, but hey, at least they're finally acknowledging what's going on.
Interesting reading the conversation here about Washington, though; I didn't realize how insane their shooting percentage was, that gives me some hope about their points percentage coming down to earth a bit. Still, there's no denying how strong they are overall, hard not to give them credit for being good at developing talent, having strong coaching, and knowing how to build a roster, because they had zero business being a playoff team last year, and now look like a real threat.
And yeah, add me to the "Tampa Bay might be scariest in the Atlantic" pile.
