@CBJWerenski8 This is an admittedly cherrypicked sample, but from the shutout of the Blues before the all star break to the win over the Oilers on March 7th,
the Jackets played 14 games, scored 56% of the goals, and 52% of the xG. We legit looked good before the injuries / late season swoon hit. It's a much improved situation from last year.
I agree with what you are saying, but having two more defensemen coming up doesn't help the lack of defensive ability of our forwards. They will get overburdened also, trying to cover for the bad defense up front. Becoming better defensive forwards will help the defensemen to stay within their responsibility more often.
We had a month or so before the injuries took over where I thought the team defense was much improved. Chinakhov looks great on the backcheck, Marchenko really improving his defensive game, Voronkov was also playing well and had sterling defensive stats, so it is a shame that Vincent didn't trust them and play them more. It looks so much more promising than last year.
To a large degree I give Vincent credit for making this team more structured after last year's disaster. But I don't think he's the right coach, he's not using players well and I don't think he's the best for development.
What we've needed literally since the moment we bought him out was Wennberg. Funny how that worked out.
Well he's hitting UFA now.
I always wanted Wennberg to be put in prime shutdown roles. And in the last year he definitely has been used that way. Classic low event center.