Post-Game Talk: ECSF Gm 4 | FLYERS (A) vs. Islanders (H) | Sun., Aug. 30, 2020

[Beef Invictus]

If people are saying he's the biggest problem on the team right now then he wasn't. If he was supposed to solidify our D and isn't then he wasn't. He fell off a cliff for the Caps too.

He did solidify our D. Let's not pretend the thing that happened didn't. It's the whole reason he's been such a shocking disappointment now.

 

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[Garbage Goal]

He did solidify our D. Let's not pretend the thing that happened didn't. It's the whole reason he's been such a shocking disappointment now.

That’s the thing, if you followed the Caps prior to acquiring him it’s not all that shocking. He fell off a cliff for them too and we’re in the playoffs against a legit team now. He’s closing in on 34 with a lot of miles. It’s an unreasonable expectation for him to be the second most important D on a contending team, which is what this team did.

I’m not disparaging his regular season contributions or what he’s capable of at his best. Both are great. My point is he was brought in to solidify our D and be a big upgrade, our biggest upgrade or second to Hayes dependent on your perspective. In a time where fan faith was coming off a huge low and the team decided to push harder for the Cup by buying Hayes, Niskanen, Braun, JVR, etc.

The point of bringing him in was to solidify our D group and help make us a contender. He’s not doing that at the most important time of the season. The argument detractors had in the off-season was that these were good adds in the off-season in a vacuum but what was the point because it looked more like eventual continued mediocrity than true contender status. That’s going to be proven true if we get knocked out by the Islanders in 6 in the second round.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the regular season or even Gudas himself necessarily. With most of our main core at forward and Niskanen himself pushing further into their 30’s I’m guessing the chances of next year being the year won’t be as good as this one had, off-season happenings pending.