Its hilarious what's being ignored is that a better Powerplay the last 2 years put the Penguins in the playoffs both years. The panic amongst the plebs about the Pens demise should be celebrated.
The only teams in the Met that are significantly better than the Pens are NYR and Carolina.
Everyone else is clumped together and are one stretch of games above average from the rest can take spot 3 and maybe a wildcard, and then bounced in the 1st round. The whole Met division is garbage right now, the only fun in it, is that because everyone is bad, the games are unpredictable and actually mean something. NJ should be better this year, I'm picking them as the 3rd spot, then its a cluster of garbage fighting for the 2nd wildcard, if the Atlantic doesn't take both of them.
I don't see the big deal about Wash, PLD is terrible and has a full NMC lol, Chychrun and Roy are fine pickups, but hardly franchise movers. and are also 14 million over the cap, so some LTIR and salary dumps have to be made.
Duclaire helps the Islanders, but not as much as a Sorokin return to his potential does. If not then they could easily miss the playoffs.
Philly is weird, I'm not sure what they call this rebuild, I am looking forward to Michkov though.
CBJ has 18million in cap space and a Laine trade to get sorted.
We have entered the same era the old Patrick Division was in from 86 to 91 when every team in the division was basically the same and every team had a shot at the playoffs due to everyone else having major flaws.
1 long injury to Shesterkin and the Rangers are no better than the top of the garbage heap behind them.