Quote (StayPositive @ Apr 18 2019 09:14am)
Phase 2 of the rebuild... got the regular season heroes, now need the playoff guys?
Hamonic is a beast. Brodie is now expendable, especially with Valimaki and Andersson definitely making the team next year. Brodie has some value too. Neal is absolute garbage, and we need to get rid of him somehow. Neal is the slowest guy on the ice, him yelling at the coach for more ice time is laughable. I think at this point we have to re-sign Smith right? He's been our only playoff hero, but he's old as hell and sucks in the regular season. But we can't let him walk, I guess? At least we didn't go all in this year, still have all our top prospects, and picks. Window is just opening as well, all the core are young and the same age...
I love Backlund, but hard to say that loss wasn't really on his shoulders... bad penalty with 2 mins to go, whiffed on an open net in OT, then lost his man and let Rantannen score the winner. Yeesh
I'm leery to make drastic changes; we are still a young team and getting our first experience in the playoffs. You look at guys like Eberle this year who went from the playoff donkey in Edmonton to having a great playoffs this year.
We absolutely need to move on from Neal and Brodie though if we can. Brodie has been plagued by turnovers and that inconsistency is just impossible to play with. Neal has been absolute shit and in this series even worse. I don't even know how he scored 20 in the NHL the last 8 years or whatever, I rarely see him get into good shooting positions, turn pucks over, ANYTHING out of him would be a miracle. I feel like this contract is a boat anchor we're gonna have to deal with.
Smith I think will be gone, Calgary likely wont offer him more than a 1-2 year deal. I hope he sticks around because having a guy that can raise his intensity to this level for the playoffs is a massive attribute for a goalie.
My biggest concern for this team is that top line and them going ice cold. The last 2 months has been absolutely brutal from them and frankly it's the biggest difference in this series right now. Backlund had an absolutely terrible game last night, no denying that but frankly Colorado is loading up one line. We need to make them pay when the other 3 are on the ice, which we simply arent doing. Asking a line to completely shut down 29/92/96 is impossible, they are 3 elite players and they are going to get their chances.