Past practice does not prove future performance, necessarily. But if we're talking about trends over the last several seasons, the only thing this team has sort of changed is its bluleline, Rackell, and some of the bottom 6 supporting cast. That seems like a lot at first glance, but when the same problems keep popping up even with the shakeups, I don't get why there shouldn't be concern?
To me, the problems with this team are part roster composition and part usage. Either one of those can be fixed rather easily, but if you fix one without fixing the other, you still end up with problems.
I dunno. I'd love this team to go on an absolute Cinderella run to close out the era. It would be amazing to watch and be a part of and it would solidify this team as Something Special, like the storied dynasty teams. But it's not going to get there by pretending problems don't exist.
It's kind of hard for me to pinpoint personnel stability as a core problem when in 2021 we score 14 in 6 games and then in 2022 we score 29 in 7 games, both against similarly stingy opponents.
One year L1 gets shutdown and then the next year it's the most explosive line of the 16 teams in R1.
The best way to assess trends is to outline the biggest reasons we lost the last 5 rounds and find commonalities. Goaltending availability dictated two of those outcomes to a large degree IMO. That's just luck and largely uncontrollable. You can have a proper 3rd goalie in waiting, but you'll be lucky if he's good enough to save you.
Another series was total lack of motivation in the bubble for the players, wanting to go home to families instead of isolating in hotels. We can look at the X's and O's of why goals against happened, but the reality is that there was a lack of focus and desire.
2019 we faced a far more organized, superior team that played a tailor-made system for crushing us. Still, it was a humiliating gutless effort that's inexcusable.
2018 was a case of exhaustion vs a hungrier team. We got owned in the neutral zone and couldn't come into the Caps zone with control + speed. Trotz just figured out a strategy to counter Sullivan.
One common thing across these 5 years is that we haven't gotten a strong goalie performance. When you lose in 2022 by one goal and game 5 in 2021 by 1 goal off a Jarry giveaway, this cannot be ignored. Maybe the 2nd line hasn't done enough too often as well.
Have there been any common threads with our bottom sixes or D-pairings? I'd need to research them all properly to answer that.
What about special teams? Same thing. Our PP percentage was pretty good the last 2 playoffs, even if the 2nd unit was the reason.
Meh, I believe in looking at this year as a separate entity. As things stand we'll have 7 players that weren't present during 2022 when April comes around. We don't know what the health situation will be for us and our opponents, and don't know how much that will impact results.
It's important to remember that our opponents aren't perfectly rounded teams either. Every team has flaws. All that matters is if those flaws outweigh the flaws of your opponent and make you lose.
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