have you not noticed since Boudreau has been here the lack of overall aggression? Its not just the role players but everyone
You are gonna tell me Getzlaf, Perry and Ryan are playing just as physical as they used when Carlyle was coach? BB has a turn the other cheek soft hockey mentality and thats why he is never gonna be a playoff winner.
Yes, hitting the other team we definitely need to do more often. But we still should have taken this in 5 games. If Perry showed up at all offensively, we would have. Not to mention Hiller giving up way to many rebounds. I can think of quite a few reasons why we lost other than toughness, and if we did one of them better we would've won this series anyways.
I do agree that we need to be LITTLE tougher though. We are missing balance.
Last season, we were too small up front and on D. I think we almost have the right balance on forwards when it comes to a combination of offense/size/speed/skill (as a whole). But, I do agree they need a little more size/toughness. I think Maroon should fix that.
Last season, we had much more puck movement from the back end but they got pushed around. This year we corrected that and got size, but we went too far. 4/6 of our D rimming the puck around the boards back to Detroit every time they touched it, and them being painfully slow, is much higher on the list than toughness of reasons why we lost. Got to find that balance. Don't just dump Sbisa, Allen, Souray. We need to keep 1-2 and replace them with someone that can move the puck. I think it'll probably be Vatanen because I think Murray is bringing up our prospects sooner that most of you guys expect. That's based on how he handled our forward group this year. And, I actually think that is a good idea.