It's so disingenuous to look at that team compared to this one and treat it like the style change was the biggest problem.
Look at our health issues for crying out loud. And look at how certain players are performing.
I do think that we missed Ehrhoff a LOT, but that team wouldn't have survived a season-long Kesler injury, injuries to Samuelsson, and Torres, no Malhotra/beast mode Lapierre-level 3rd line center, weaker goaltending outings, and overall poor execution (especially comparing Hamhuis-Bieksa/Edler, who are essentially still playing the same style) as well.
In my opinion, in a hypothetical world where we didn't make the run that year and Malhotra/Kesler didn't suffer those injuries, and everyone's at the same level of health/sharpness as that year, but we still made the same trades and changes in playing style,
Sedin - Sedin - Burrows
Higgins - Kesler - Booth
Raymond - Malhotra - Hansen
Weise - Lapierre - Kassian
Hamhuis - Bieksa
Edler - Tanev
Garrison - Ballard
Schneider
Luongo
Would probably have been able to do comparable damage, even with a different style, IMO.
It's an unfortunate situation the team's in right now, but this is pretty ridiculous, IMO.
I personally prefer the personnel, everyone's just either injured or playing with their head up their ass. If they played with the sharpness/health/effort that that team played with, there would be no dropoff, IMO.
