Wow...what a picture...just awesome...!
Because there are so many, particularly southern, options :
> The team, the organization, needs to be top shelf, and consistently so.
Part of that, involves having an identity, which, IMO, our favorite team just doesn't have. Bowman and Pollock. Smarts. The players, talented and tough. Everybody knew it and sworn enemies begrudgingly admitted it.
We are so often McGuire-ingly referred to as a great skating team, and I am not so sure we are a GREAT skating team, up and down the lineup. Regardless, the blades cease to churn like they can when the heavy-hitting or trap masters clamp down. The imbalanced nature of the lineup the past several years, and/or poor role-playing, have led to several incidents which had me reaching for the remote, red-faced with embarrassment and anger.
Lucic > Komisarek
Chara > Pacioretty (personally, I would Clarke-Kharlamov him for that, knock him off that one ankle for a month or three, but that's just me)
Grabbo > Markov (the blue`n`white pest should be throttled for that, STILL)
* Some Leaf stiff > wailing away and laughing at Josh G.
I think this explains McCarron at pick No. 25 (no willingness to risk missing out on him).
That's fine, that is a step, but what are we ultimately building, say 4-5 years down the road?
There are other issues, taxes, hyper-fandom, etc. that I THINK can be greatly diminished if the club is understood, as a cold hard fact, to be super-well-run, that has a template for winning, year after year.
I don`t expect grandiose `we are gonna be!' speeches from Marc. I hope the real fervor is there, though, more privately.
There are no better fans in the game, anywhere; no better hockey city.
Confine the clowning to history and *spoil* the best fans anywhere with some truly great memories.
And every guy on the damn team has to be able to skate. NO plodders.
No pretenders, either.
Build it and they will come, or never want to leave.