I agree we might not be a 9-4 team and things still need to be done to get Crosby going but I don't think we're a 4-9 team or anything that extreme. Maybe like an 8-5 team or 7-6.
Yeah, our wins have been overly reliant on goaltending, but we've also been winning despite Crosby not producing and the PP being anemic. If that changes we'll be better than a 9-4 team.
How some people arrive at the wrong answer when they're clearly smart enough to recognize the correct equation is puzzling to me. You're absolutely right they're record isn't indicative of their actual play, but you almost certainly will be mistaken that it eventually will be if things would only start bouncing their way.
The offense is never going to "come around" or "wake up" and magically fix their offensive issues while retaining their smoke and mirrors staunch defensive play. They have no offense because they're overly favoring defense. One is creating the other. If they ever do start scoring more, it won't be because things finally clicked, it'll be because the coaching finally allowed it to happen.
The stars, who took the pens out behind the woodshed and who everyone is pointing to as an excuse for a couple of their losses in order to convince themselves to feel better about their record have given up 15 more goals than the pens. What a joke right? Real teams sacrifice everything for defense. Except they've scored 21 more goals in the process. Probably because they realize their roster advantage over other teams is in their forwards and thus are playing in a way to execute that advantage, and it's working. Or what about mtl and nyr? Both with similar defensive success but with far better offensive production. Coaching apparently doesn't have to be an all or nothing concept.
We'll probably never know if this team would actually be better or not by taking the restraints off the offense and seeing if that advantage could be greater than the disadvantage of a less insulated defense, because they're not going to as long as they keep winning. They kept playing this way despite losing so much they almost missed the playoffs at the end of last season, what possible evidence is there to suggest they're going to change just to try something different when they're actually winning now instead?
Also sorry if this came off too confrontational, used your quote as more of a springboard if anything, not directed at you.
