Everyone here talking about Defense like Goaltending wasn't an issue last night... Skinner goes through bouts of being bad and showed that again last night. I hope he figures that out but I think Goaltending will be talked about more and more as the season wears on. I believe we should have picked up Chris Driedger for free yesterday.
Yes defense is an issue, but I'd like to give the new guys a little more time to put it all together. It has always appeared like they are going to use the cap space from Kane for a RD at the deadline but prices will be higher if we're more desperate... Gustav Lindstrom is a player I have time to claim but we should have offered a PTO to get a better view.
I'd have time for giving the defence time to gel if the problems were simply chemistry related. They weren't though, and it's a repeat of every f***ing October.
All the same themes are present across the board. Shitty gaps/back in too deep, abysmal coverage off the rush, laissez faire approach to net front defending, not tying up sticks allowing deflection goals, etc, etc, etc.
One of the problems here is like the rest of this group, I've learned that Bouchard is a slow starter. He sucks every October. I'm not as certain on Ekholm, but he wasn't good to start last year either, but that could have been injury related. These two have to step up now and carry the mail, because any formation with Nurse in it is going to get caved, and the third pair is the third pair. Not fair to them, but it is what it is.