I wonder how much mileage we can get out of players just "getting better."
Hughes and Pettersson can get stronger.
Hronek has a lot of holes in his defensive game, but can he plug them?
We need to overhaul the PP completely and hire a brand new PP coach whose only job is to live, breathe and die by the PP. In fact, he should only get paid for each PP goal we score.
5k salary per Canucks PP goal scored.
These are all things we can improve without taking up any extra cap space or trading any assets.
One thing that has become abundantly clear is we need to enforce a more dynamic system, especially on the powerplay. Guys need to be willing (and encouraged) to switch lanes, move around freely and just get some garbage chances on net that aren't some beautiful crease cross play.
The one time they actually did that this series they scored twice. I don't know whether it's Tocchet being too rigid on systems and structure or the guys themselves simply overthinking. In the end, it doesn't really matter. They cannot come back next season playing the exact same way nor can they continue on afraid to make adjustments.
Edmonton figured out how to pressure us with an aggressive forecheck but backed off just enough to stifle anything we could muster. Instead of recognizing that more neutral play and attacking them relentlessly ourselves which could have caught them off guard since we aren't normally that kind of team, we just... waited and waited and waited for the eventual mistake.
Funny enough, it did actually happened and we got two goals out of it. But we played with fire all game instead of reacting.
