Not going to parse through everyone to come up with what would amount to an arbitrary grade based who did or did not piss me off.
Forwards, top 6 shown improvement, scoring at es. Jeff ma f***in skinner, jack has someone to bury the puck finally, he does still feel like the guy that has another gear but doesn’t want to play at it, thankfully the gear he plays at is better than 95% of the league. B+ Skinner is playing above expectations everyone else is meeting them.
Bottom 6. Still carrying a lot of dead weight at es. Sobotka can go. C+ A lot of guys who have streaks of good play stuck into trash play. See Rod, E; Tageson, Tom.
PP. Yuck most of the time and even when they’re scoring it’s more of an occasional pressure than consistent play being rewarded. C.
PK. Dramatic improvement over the first third to the point that it’s now solidly not scary to be short handed. Larry and Gus and sometimes even Jack. B+, start of the season was bad last 15 been good or better.
D. Surprisingly steady with the best player looking like he’s just getting ready to break out. Scandella, grumble grumble. B-. Consistency and some baddies. Consistency See Ristolainen, R; Dahlin, R; Bogosian, Z; McCabe, J. Baddies See Scandella, oof; Beaulieu, N, Nelson, C.
G. Said Hutton would be surprise player of the season, check. Thought Linus would struggle earlier, better than expected, he would be the top guy if we had last years tandem still. A-. bacon savers and have given guys playing inconsistent hockey opportunities to elevate bad play with good plays late in games.
Coaching. I don’t know, if you think a coach sucks and the team is in the top 5 are you wrong or does coaching not matter anywhere near as much as people claim? I’ve never been overly impressed with the role of nhl coaches. Talent drives teams more than anything else. PP shouldn’t be as flat as it is with the players they can ice. Special teams I’ll blame on coaches all day but 1 unit is solid and the other isn’t.
Overall A-. A team can do a lot with solid goaltending but this is a shaky A based off a great stretch. I’m back in. Didn’t expect that to happen this early in the season. Kind of dreading the next 10 days though. Best apart of the winning streak was that there were a lot of wins against teams I didn’t think they could steal a point from so the record is now running with found money.
Honestly though the streak ending has me a little emotionally drained.