Big bowl of meh for me about that.
Oh the East was tough? Who f***ing cares. For the 2nd year in a row we finished the season with a Top 3 record and don't even make it out of the 2nd round. I don't care that the rest of the conference was good, outside of Florida, we consistently showed we were better than the rest of this conference. And it didn't matter. I wouldn't be as pissed off about this if we put up a great fight each year only to be bested by a team that played better, but that's just not been the case. Against Nashville, Tampa, Boston, and now New York, we consistently killed ourselves with horribly lazy play, unbelievably stupid penalties, a defense that is far more leaky than its reputation says it should be, and an entire offensive attack that goes ice cold.
Last night getting shelled and dog walked out of our own house in Game 7 against a team we have absolutely no business getting spanked by should absolutely be a tipping point that drives some serious change to the makeup of this team going forward. What we are doing in the playoffs does not work. Playing our game in the playoffs does not work. The status quo is not working.
And yet I don't have any faith in the front office to actually address these issues that have legitimately been present for 4 years now. We'll make a few 'buy low' moves, let guys like Trocheck and Neiderriter go to chase a higher salary. We'll wait til all the top end free agents are off the board and then we'll pick up the best of the table scraps after the fact, and then we'll go into next year, play the first 3 months of the season like the playoffs start in October, burn ourselves out by March and shit ourselves in May. Wash, rinse, repeat.