A few people on this board correctly predicted the D would be bad, but I doubt they thought it would be THIS bad!
Systems can be taught. Mistakes can be reduced. We could still see a big improvement over the next few months. This is not as good as it gets.
It is sort of weird, they won some games pretty easily, and they lost some games pretty badly. It doesn't seem to be the quality of the opposition and they actually did better on the last back to back, though they visibly tire at the end of periods and toward the end of the game. Maybe it's a style of play thing, or a case of some opposing coaches or players seeing the obvious problems and exploiting them while others don't?
Is it just that the goalies stood on their heads in the wins?
The team has been pretty bad defensively when Guhle is out the last few years, and he has hardly played this year, certainly hasn't been able to get completely healthy or comfortable out there. Hutson is really good offensively but he has some clear weaknesses on the defensive end. Most of the other offensive D are both young and inconsistent, Barron, Engstrom... Harris and Kovacevic were probably their most mature D, and among the most effective on D. The braintrust decided to create spots and hope players would step up, but that hasn't happened. With Reinbacher there would be a bit of a logjam, but, now that he's out, they are playing AHL vets in Laval and guys who are too young in the bigs.
It may be part of the plan. It's pretty clear the team isn't going to turn a corner until they can dump pretty much all the old guys and sign some mentors to show the way. They can't ditch the contracts this year, and they don't have replacements for all of them if they could. I think we all hoped that more players would be healthy, that Guhle would fill out a bit, and that some of the young guys would seize the opportunity, but it hasn't happened. They should really be at the point where plugging in one really good D and a checking forward or two would fix a lot.
Either the team gets better or they get another high draft pick. Either way it shouldn't be too bad long term, it'll just suck somewhat this year.
