Your logic is awful, scraping by and pushing harder to make the playoffs towards the end of the season would expend more energy than the Lightning sleepwalking through the 2nd half of last season. Keep pushing the narrative that this team was burnt out by the playoffs chasing wins, it just makes you look silly.
My logic is based on:
1) our own last year result in playoff
2) Blues and Bruins result
3) Blues, Boston and Tampa result in the 2nd half of the last year regular season. They were 3 teams leading in wins and points in the 2nd half, but only Tampa was leading in the 1st half.
4) Unlike Blues, Bruins did not change their coach in the mid of the last season. So their result does not correspond with the coach change.
Now my turn to ask questions: How winning another 62 (or even more games) can help us in playoff, if it did not help last year? What's your evidence?
P.s.
And dont worry I am going to use the same words describing your evidence and conclusion - "silly" and "awful", so you cant be insulted, since you just used it to describe mine and you think its ok to use them.
P.p.s Absence of your answer / absence of evidence in your reply would make you look silly btw.