Mika's had a post season run that was as productive as Eichel's cup winning season so my point still stands. You can't just apply labels to guys and be like "here is the formula! If you don't have most of these components, you're f***ed!"
2022 actually had 3 guys basically doing elite shit (Zibanejad, Fox, Igor) plus a 10 goal run from Kreider. From a pure output standpoint, that team produced more like a conference finalist and contender than the 2024 team did (the 2024 team was objectively better.)
Whether or not he can do it now is a valid question that I'm pretty sure we have the answer to, but the point is he's done it before despite not being "elite" and he's not the only one who ever has.
We've seen the inverse too where the guy who is supposed to be "elite" has been so far from it.
One thing
@Machinehead has always preached that I do agree with is that roster construction doesn't have to be complicated - Minimize/remove the landmines and fill your roster with mostly decent to good players to support hopefully 2-3 great (or better) ones. It's obviously more nuanced than that but doing that alone will get you a team that is good and if you have a few guys beyond the great ones who can elevate their game at the right time, thats a contender (provided your great players don't completely shrink under the lights.)
Yeah but if Zibanejad had continued his play and lifted a Cup in retrospect we’d probably view him a lot differently.
The problem is once Tampa got their feet Zibanejad was shut down. He had a big old goose egg the last three games which the Rangers all lost. Kreider had one point in the last four games which the Rangers all lost.
Thats where the wheat is separated from the chaff. It’s one thing to put up 8 points in a first round series. Do it in the conference finals or cup finals and it’s another.
It’s no surprise that Zibanejad could not sustain his elite play. You say “he was playing like that elite player” - yeah, until he wasn’t.
And then the Rangers lost four straight games and got bounced. Players who aren’t the tippy top elite tier players end up wilting when they go up against the players who ARE upper caliber. You know who didn’t go scoreless in the last three games of that Tampa series? Kucherov with 3 points in the last three games (6 in the last 4, all Tampa wins). Stamkos also was dominant, 5 points in those last four games.
Those disappearing acts are predictable because we can know in advance to a large degree that Kreider, basically a career 50 point wing, or Zibanejad, a career 70 point center, aren’t on the same level as elite players like Stamkos, Kucherov, and Point.
The guy who IS on that level is Panarin. He’s the one guy on that level who you should have been able to count on to produce in the playoffs. But there he is, one point in the last three in that Tampa series.
The problem is you’ll need more than one player of that level. The Lightning were missing Point and so Stamkos and Kucherov stepped up. When our elite guy went missing (Panarin) we didn’t have two other elite forwards to pick up the slack. The guys who had been playing at an elite level to that point (Zibanejad and Kreider) wilted because they aren’t on that level. Not cause they got lazy. They were outplayed because they aren’t as good as Tampa’s guys.
This was entirely foreseeable.
The formula projects the caliber player you need and we don't have it. Yes, players can get hot who aren't otherwise on that level (ROR, for example). And if Mika continued to score 8 points a round we would have beaten Tampa, perhaps swept Tampa.
But he didn't and we didn't. Not because he didn't want to. He's not good enough and that's how, by and large, the non-elite, not-good-enough players get weeded out.
As we sit here trying to figure out what do to next, from here, trying to build a Cup winner, eliminating black holes from your roster is a good starting point, but if your follow up takeaway is "Build another team with 1 elite forward and then have your next two forwards be 50 and 70 point type guys," then they are probably gonna hit that wall in the playoffs again and again and again.
Sure, maybe they'll get lucky and they'll get a non-elite Ryan O'Reilly to play like an elite player for four rounds, but the odds are better that the Rangers can go FIND another real elite player than they are that the Rangers can get a non-elite player to play like an elite one for four consecutive series'.
