You know I’ve stayed clear of criticizing Shero. Perhaps it was just me giving him some rope or faith or whatever you want to call it. But now really examining this team and and roster after 10 games it’s reasonabke to question his decision making.
I personally didn’t like the Henrique trade from the day it happened. You create a hole in one place to fill one in another. Didn’t make sense to me then, still doesn’t make sense to me now. Especially when the hole you’re creating is at 2C for a team with a supposedly attacking identity. Why would you make this trade while Zacha was still an unproven/unknown commodity? It puts too much pressure on the kid who already wasn’t living up to expectations and now it appears he is busting.
Likewise with the departures from last season. We don’t bring back Gibbons, Maroon, Grabner. Ok understandable in a vacuum, but what was the plan to replace them? Apparently with the way the lineup looks now the only “plan” was to just fill in their spots with AHL plugs. Say what you will about Gibbons and Grabner but they’re probably still a step above anyone of these guys being called up now.
Hybes certainly deserves some blame as well. I don’t think there’s really a whole lot of discipline and structure to his system. I’m wondering if we are like Vegas, where teams look like they’ve figured out how to neutralize our speed and strategy with structure, and it wasn’t that hard to figure out because it really wasn’t all that complicated to begin with.
This team went trough a lot of ups and downs last year and ultimately proved they can win when it mattered at the end of the season, despite all the negative nancies on here who for the better part of the middle 3 months of the season kept insisting it was not a playoff caliber team. But this feels different. 1 win in 7 games where the team doesn’t even look competitive? Almost two lines worth of AHL fodder? This may not really be the same team as last year. And to come full circle with my point, that’s where you have to questions Shero’s performance.