GDT: Blues @ Sharks|8pm, FSMW|

[mike1320]

How you can say that? This team has changed quite a bit after Cup run. It will take years to build real Stanley Cup contender team again.

 

[Brian39]

How you can say that? This team has changed quite a bit after Cup run. It will take years to build real Stanley Cup contender team again.

Change doesn't equal getting worse. The 2013 Blackhawks team was very different than the 2010 team, with only 9 members of the 2010 team still on the roster. But that 2013 team went 36-7-5 in the shortened season, including a ridiculous start where they went 24 straight games without a regulation loss (21-0-3). They went 16-6 in the playoffs and were very obviously the best team in hockey that year.

Digging deeper into the Hawks, their 2011 season was pretty underwhelming. They had to make some really tough cap decisions and wound up barely making the playoffs as the 8 seed. They lost to Vancouver in round 1.

They looked better in 2012, finishing with 101 points (4th in a ridiculously good Central Division, 5th in the West) and losing to Arizona in round 1. A good season for sure, but at this point they were not the juggernaut that they became the next season.

So you had a team that won the Cup, went through major roster changes, had a 2 year transition and then won the Cup again in year 3 of that transition. We're currently in year 2 post-Cup.

Change doesn't mean rebuild. Your claim that changing a Cup roster means a team is years away from another Cup has no merit. I don't agree with some of Army's decisions since the Cup and we have also had some tough luck with J-Bo's career being unexpectedly cut short. I have been pretty consistent that I don't believe we are in the top tier of teams this season. However, that doesn't mean the roster is a disaster. We still have a very good core and our cap structure is in great shape. Mikkola and Perunovich offer cost-controlled support to the blue line moving forward, we have a clear 1C in ROR, a clear top 6 C in Schenn, clear middle 6 Cs in Thomas/Sunny and then a good stable of wingers in Perron/Kyrou/Tarasenko. Krug-Faulk have been a good top pairing by any metric and if Parayko returns healthy by next season the D is in good (albeit not elite) shape. This notion that the roster has been gutted of quality is just not true.

ROR, Schenn, Perron, Tarasenko, Thomas, Sunny, Sanford, Barby, Blais, Parayko, Dunn, Bortz, and Binner all played regularly in the 2019 Cup run and are under contract (or RFA team control) next season. That group includes 7 of our top 10 playoff scorers and will jump to 8 of 10 if we re-sign Schwartz. Kyrou has joined the fold and I think it is reasonable to expect him to be able to chip in .3+ points per game in a playoff push. Thomas has been improving off his rookie year and I think we can expect him to contribute more than the .28 points per game he contributed in the 2019 run. The team is transitioning to rely on different strengths than we did in 2019, but there is still a huge amount of talent on the roster and a good chunk of the core remains.

Edit: Binner is a UFA, but I'm pretty confident that the Blues will push to re-sign him. The stupid 2 year bridge deal means that next contract is going to hurt, but I think we will do what it takes to bring him back. We certainly have the cap space to do it.