Tampa has reached San Jose levels of choking now.
Not quite that bad just yet, but this should really bring them back down to earth a bit. Yzerman didn't really do an amazing job this year, like everyone wants us to believe. Girardi was not needed, Andrej Sustr isn't really worse than him. McDonagh looked like a broken down jalopy, that's wheels fell off right in the D-zone. That's the only place I ever noticed him for most of the playoffs.
I already went over about 4-5 players that they desperately need to be rid of next year.
Girardi, Callahan, Coburn, especially the first two. If they can get rid of those two, that would be great for them. I will be surprised if more than one of them isn't there next year and wouldn't be the least bit surprised if all 3 of them were back next year. Pierre thinks Callahan wins you games, but hopefully for them their GM and management don't agree. Girardi and Callahan shouldn't be on contending teams, especially not at their current cap hits. They should be playing on rebuilding tanking teams, if anywhere in the NHL.
McDonagh should make them better, but he might be a waste of cap space for them and was the defenseman version of Michael Grabner for us for the Bolts this year, particularly in the playoffs.
Sergachev should be playing more than guys like Girardi. The f*** is the matter with Jon ''Elite head coach'' Cooper? Sergachev averaged a little more than 12 minutes per game these playoffs.
No wonder Hedman looks so old already, has to carry around hundreds of pounds of useless plods on their D.