Quote (Secksii @ Feb 4 2021 11:09pm)
I gotta disagree, the vets are huge to this young team. Not comparable with the vets Oilers had.
Right now, the vets are carrying this team and doing their part. It's the players that we expected to improve aren't improving, rather regressed and just not their usual self.
Beagle has been phenomenal since day 1 of his contract, no doubt he's an overpaid 4c, but he has been playing like 3C since our depth doesn't have a good 3C to replace him. He was not brought into score 30pts, people need to understand this.
He is there to take the hard minutes whenever Horvat is resting, win faceoffs, PK, and he clicks well with Motte. He isn't going to outplay MacKinnon or McDavid, but he will tire them out after winning the faceoffs, even if they're being hemmed in their own zone. Opposed to Gaudette straight up losing the draw, and they are setting up to score against with full of stamina.
Sutter has been put back into 3C since Gaudette isn't ready to play in the NHL level with his 2 way game. The bottom 6 looked a lot more stable since, and surprisingly the bottom 6 are doing well opposed to the last seasons.
Edler & Schmidt is putting up great defensive stats despite how much of a shitshow our defense is. Myers is looking great point wise as people wanted, but his defensive stats are atrocious. Benn stablized the backend more, when Green gave into letting him play his off hand side.
Losing vets like tanev/marky are already huge part of calgary, hanafin putting up elite defensive numbers with tanev. Marky being god etc.
Right now, it's the young guys that are struggling the most. Imagine if the team didn't have these vets holding down the fort, instead MORE young guys like Gaudette, Virtanen, Juolevi, MacEwen, Rathbone, Chatfield etc. thrown in there instead. We'd be where Ottawa is at, probably a lot worse lol. That's more closer to the edmonton model
Coaching wise they could use a lot of work, but no one complained last season. Green can't force players to do their part, only guide them what they need to do to win. When they do it, they look strong and comeptitive like last season, Jets win was a great example. The problem is they don't show up consistently, especially when they make a bad turn over and start to panic, with "here we go again" mentality. Only Hoglander seems to be immune to it, he fights for the puck like his life depends on it, petey used to do this, but not this season for some reason.
Miller/Hughes/Petey underperforming is partially why we're doing so bad. But Russell is donezo, Sutter and Myers go from looking fine to making braindead plays all the time, Beagle is useless outside of defensive assignments and Eriksson isn't even playing. Take Myers/Eriksson/Sutter alone and these guys take up more cap than Markstrom/Tanev/Toffoli. I mean sure, relative to realistic expectations they aren't collectively doing that terrible but given the cap space they take up and the players we lost due to their presence, their performance is completely unacceptable. Again, not like we can expect much better but everyone knew it would come to this the moment these contracts were inked. Now we're in a situation where we're completely fucked when the young guns are slumping and as a fan I'd rather not live with that expectation.
This post was edited by Hizkuntza on Feb 5 2021 01:31am