I believe it's much healthier for the players to retain some shred of dignity and self respect despite it being a difficult year. Athletes play best when they're confident and focused, and that's how I want them to return next year. I don't want them to spend all summer dreading next year because all they do anymore is lose.
DK playing B2B is a terrible idea, if they want to win.
For tanking purposes, it’s beautiful.
Plus Chuck has been a total sieve lately. Hobson’s choice for Lavi & co I suppose.I feel like research is mixed on this subject. There was like one analysis that showed a marginal decline in save percentage on the second of b2b games but since then I think there’s been little effect shown?
Not positive on this though. I’ll have to dig it up.
I expect organisation or fans to prefer tanking, but I hope players are out to win.There's already a losing culture in the locker room. What does winning this game do for the organization? Coach(s) gone after this season. Can't get into the POs. Lavi isn't playing a bunch of new players to assess their capabilities. Sooooo...pride and maybe some newer players want to prove themselves? Ok.
I'd rather us lose the rest of the games in the RS and gain a better draft pick than us winning 50% of the remainder and gain nothing.
Can’t like this enough….I just can’t root for a loss myself.I always root for us to win. Especially since we really aren’t in the actual running, as far as I understand it anyway, for Bedard, Fantilli, Michkov. Yes, it’s supposedly a strong draft year, but purposely tanking to improve — marginally — your draft spot? It just seems dumb. Especially when i look at how imperfect the process of drafting is overall. Some absolute gems are picked in later rounds or are not drafted at all. And plenty who are picked in first or second round turn out not to be NHL quality. To me, the front office should concentrate on drafting better and smarter. And on the ice, with whatever personnel are available that night, try to f******* win. As a Caps fan from their very first season on, i just can’t root for them to lose, ever. It’s too deep a habit
Yep, all hope is lost. New coaches, other new players, a healthier Wilson and Backstrom, none of it will matter.So let’s say that the following forwards are back next year:
Ovechkin
Backstrom
Wilson
Strome
Milano
Dowd
Oshie
Kubel
Protas
Defense:
Sandin
Carlson
Alexeyev
Carlson
Jensen
TVR
Fever
That assumes Kuzy and Mantha are moved and Sheary is not resigned.
Are they really going to be that much better of a team? There could be more turn over but if not I would be hard pressed to believe the results would be drastically different.