No we are not a lottery team. Unless you simply mean missing the playoffs which is technically still a part of the lottery. We will finish between 10th and 20th next year in the league. I suspect a lot closer to 10th. If I had to nail it down I would say 13th.
We had over 100 points last year. And what's supposed to make us so much worse? Losing Lack? For all of the lovers of advanced statistics here (and I guarantee that history will show that a lot of you adhere far too strictly to them), there is an ignorance of the birth of goalie-based advanced statistics. Some of which look at quality of scoring chances and save percentage broken down into 'high quality chances, medium quality chances, and low quality chances'. Miller was in the top 10 in stopping 'high quality chances' but was in the bottom 10 in low and medium. Lack was in the bottom 10 in stopping high quality chances, but was in the top 5 or 6 in medium and low quality chances.
The stats are in their infancy, but apparently ability to stop high quality chances is much more sustainable while low and medium tend to be a lot more random.
Source:
http://vansunsportsblogs.com/2015/06/24/the-case-for-ryan-miller/
Further, Miller changed parts of his style this year to suit Melanson and to make his style more sustainable (he was playing a young goaltender's game prior). It was known that this would lead to hiccups in the early part of the process, and it did.
I will be surprised if Lack outperforms Miller this season.
If we're supposed to be worried about losing Kassian, I doubt there has been a season yet (maybe second half of 03-04) where Prust has been less of a net positive for a team than Kassian has.
Look, I like Lack and I like Kassian. But these aren't deals that will cripple us. Losing Bieksa may hurt in the character department (and I will certainly miss that side of him). In fact, he played hurt last year and I suspect he has a better year coming up. But whomever replaces him whether it's Clendenning or Corrado won't be horrendously worse than he was
last year. He was ineffective last year and I suspect he knows it.
Look, I wasn't originally on board with the Virtanen signing (wanted Ehlers). Nobody likes the Sbisa signing (though he's obviously filler and this is obviously a show-me contract). So Benning still needs to prove it to me. But this meme that he is the village idiot and can't make a single good decision is just stupid. I wish people would stand up and admit their mistakes when they are proven to be wrong. Because they will be. I'm not saying that Benning is going to turn out to be a genius. I don't know the answer to that and neither do you. But just because he isn't particularly well spoken and has an 'aww shucks' demeanour doesn't mean that he's an idiot.
There are a lot of typically reasonable posters flying off of the handle based entirely on speculation on how things will go (I'm looking at you MS. Typically one of my favorite posters). Howe about we give him two more years and see where it takes us.
And for those who want to 'tank'. Literally 5 years ago that talk was disgusting to any fan of the NHL. And it still should be. Have some god damn pride. That doesn't mean that you re-sign all of your older players and bury your young ones in the minors. But attempting to sewer your own team for a high draft pick is pathetic. I can only assume that most who want that option haven't played sports at any kind of decent level.
I can see both those things happening, however.
