A bubble team would be fantastic in my view...if we are playing meaningful games past February, that is a huge improvement from the last several years...
But the problem is we really haven't gotten into the difficult part of our schedule yet. We definitely should have won more of these early games...Losing to the Blue Jackets, Ducks and Kings in a row doesn't really feel like"bubble" to me...feels more like ping-pong ball watch.
We got a point in two of those three games. Our goaltending and defense are keeping us in games we would have gotten blown out in last year.
The special teams obviously needs to be addressed but it's encouraging that we're getting points even in losses, and even stealing some wins in games where we aren't playing our best.
I agree that our season will be decided by our Metro division games but there's still a lot to shake out. The Canes will not continue winning 90% of their games. The Flyers and Jackets are nowhere as good as they've looked the first 10 games. I don't buy the NYR hype, they have three good skaters and can't win a game unless Shesterkin starts. There are going to continue to be struggles, especially if we don't get special teams figured out, but I think we can hang with every team in the division and not look like a Mickey Mouse club.
An interesting note: people remember the 2012 team for the dominance in the playoffs, but we only finished 6th in the East and were on the bubble for most of the season. That team was 15-13-1 on December 1st, definitely a bubble team (18th in the league, T-10th in the East). Probably because our PP was horrible, 13% which was bottom-5 in the league. On December 12th we traded for Kurtis Foster, who gave our PP a shot in the arm. It went from 13.2% to 20.6% the time he was here. Ponikarovsky was acquired January 20th to improve our bottom-6 depth. Then Foster was flipped on February 24th for Zidlicky. Zajac came back from injury, Gio2 got called up on the last game of the season. The roster we had for Game 1 against the Panthers was very different from the roster we had in November/December.
I bring this up because that team was a work in progress all season. We went from 10th in the East on Dec 1 to 5th in the East by the trade deadline because Lou was proactive about supplementing the roster and fixing the holes he saw. I'm fascinated to see what Fitz does with the roster if we're still hanging in there late in January. We have plenty of picks/prospects to use as trade fodder if he wants to add reinforcements. He's been preaching about the long game for a while, but we have expendable assets and holes that need to be filled.