Speculation: 2019 NHL Entry Draft Thread

[ps241]

And we still safely made the playoffs. This suggests to me a team with the talent to contend. The season before we went to the conference finals with virtually the same line up. While we have taken a couple hits on defense, it is only Trouba that will leave a hole. We have a very talented forward group of young stars and it seems reasonably that at least some of them take steps forward. Last season the Blues were a tire fire the first half of the season and then went onto to win the cup. Sometimes talented teams go through extended periods were they underachieve.

My starting point is talent wise we are safely in the top half of teams in the league and 16 out of 31 teams make the playoffs, and for now 8 out of 15 teams in the West make the playoffs and there isn't 8 more talented teams than us in our conference. And since I'm not part of the gloom and doom crowd I will believe we are a playoff team until we are actually not a playoff team.

I think the first half of last season we overachieved a bit and the second half of last year was pretty odd, not sure what happened outside of some key injuries but it wasn't good. It was a quirky year but we coasted into the playoffs without allot of fear due to a big early build up of points.

The major change since we crushed it in 2017-18 is:

Morrissey Trouba (gone)
Enstrom (gone) Buff
Kuli Myers (gone)

Chiarot (gone maybe)


That was a kick ass top 7 and this season it looks like:

Morrissey xxxxxx
xxxxxx Buff
Kuli

I look at that as a major difference between this year and 2017-18. Now we have no idea whether this will be the opening night D core or not so we shall wait and see. What I do see positive about the Jets is a fair amount of scoring talent. However unless our young guns like Laine, Connor, Roslo, and Niku grow allot the combination of the defensive exodus and the cap realities our 2019-20 Jets team could be a shadow of our former 2017-18 team. The good news is growth of young stars is not out of reason.