Alright kids, this might be an angry, emotional postmortem but it will do.
Let's just jump right into the list of concerns:
- Babcock man. I know it's easy to point at the coach when the players don't get it done, but here we are with shit utilization again costing us in a 7 game series against the Bruins. Ron Hainsey isn't a #2, Zaitsev isn't a #3, full stop. But they get played like that and it regularly, regularly costs us. We struggled or at the minimum under performed damn near everywhere coaching has the biggest impact and adjusting just isn't something Mike does. He was legitimately good for the young guys as they established themselves as NHL players, but it's pretty clear now that tactically he's killing us. I get if Dubas doesn't fire him, but at the absolute minimum his assistants have to go and all of the team's systems have to be pulled apart and examined, especially the special teams. We have too much talent on both sides of the puck to be mediocre at both.
- The blueline. This at least partially fixes itself with certain bodies leaving due to contracts ending, and I expect Sandin to make the team out of camp next year, the kid is just that good. Dubas has some work to do (specifically, finding a home for Zaitsev) but for as much shit as it's going to take over the summer, Rielly-Muzzin-Dermott-Sandin-Rosen isn't a bad starting point. We're going to need another body or two though that are #4-5 type quality guys and we don't have a lot of cap space to do it with (though turning Zaitsev into
- Kadri. What do we do here? **** me I'd love to give him another mulligan, but the 1st round goes through Boston again next year and we just can't trust him to not get the red mist every ****ing time he sees a cheap shot on a team mate in front of him. If we can get a legit top 6 winger for him, I think we have to consider moving Willy to centre full time and pulling the trigger on the trade
- Nylander. For the analytically inclined, we know that he wasn't as bad as the general public thinks, but he should be a lot better than that. It shouldn't even be up for that type of discussion, but Willy allowed it to become one. There will be stupid calls to trade him for a defender (the siren song of the southern ontarian moron if there ever was one) but regardless, dude needs to be way better next season for us to take another step forward. He has legit game breaking talent and should be a regular weapon for us. With that said, Babcock should have strapped him to Matthews until they worked their shit out. Kappy is a lovely player, but he's not the playmaker that helps drive Matthews
- Marleau. This imo is Dubas' toughest job of the summer. He's done. We know it, hopefully he knows it. At the absolute most, he should be a 4th liner but with our cap situation, we need some sort of Orpik manuevre to make that work. We could really use that cap space
- Freddy. Again just good enough to not quite be good enough. I had numb nuts take offence to me calling him a limiting factor to our winning a cup when I said it early in the season and here we are again with Freddy giving up a complete laugher that had us chasing the game and then leaving all sorts of space in the top of the net to shoot at on the 3rd one when we had cut the lead to one. This is 3 years in a row he's been a key reason we're not pulling out wins in these elimination games. He's a good starting goalie, but I don't know if he's good enough. We're locked in, but sadly we're in the same spot with him we were in last summer. We need a backup who can cut his workload down into the mid 50's.