I think it boils down to three things:
1) I bring this up every day, I know, but people bring up effort/physicality every day so here we are: this team is SLOW. Like a jar of honey bleeding to death in an igloo. You can't forecheck without speed in 2021. I don't care how tough your lineup is.
2) We don't really employ a system that requires physical play. We're not really interested in rebounds, long periods of cycling, puck support, or clogging up the NZ. We play up and down until something breaks for us, and if it doesn't, dump and change. If opposing coaches -like Barry Trots or anyone a playoff series, for example- simply decides they're not skating up and down the ice with us, we're helpless. It's very similar to AV, but AV's teams actually were fast and got odd-man rushes constantly.
@Raspewtin has said it before: we're slow and we play like a fast-break team.
3) This team does legitimately have concentrations of players -most of our veterans and all of our centers- in the same areas who are interested in making plays first and foremost. There's nothing wrong with that. You suck and you're boring without east-west players. The big bad Islanders have a f***ing bunch of guys who dangle and pass the whole game. But they also have Nelson, Pageau, and Cizikas down the middle. We don't have any centers who, traditionally, are good at being centers. Chytil could be but needs to work on faceoffs. Barron, I think, certainly will be. Zibanejad and Strome being the two who play the most by far is probably overkill and makes us a lot less versatile.
