Jameson Olive: Frantic February awaits Panthers upon return from All-Star break

[iam76]

I feel that we have already turned heads and progressed. Now we have to continue progressing. We could shock everyone and make playoffs. Or we could just miss and get a damn good scoring prospect.
Or we could bomb out and get a great future stud. I feel we either make or just miss playoffs. This is an improvement. People should be happy with that as long as next year we take another step forward. We have to put our mind set with our core guys... Other teams would die to have our youth core

 

[Drugs Delaney]

I feel that we have already turned heads and progressed. Now we have to continue progressing. We could shock everyone and make playoffs. Or we could just miss and get a damn good scoring prospect.
Or we could bomb out and get a great future stud. I feel we either make or just miss playoffs. This is an improvement. People should be happy with that as long as next year we take another step forward. We have to put our mind set with our core guys... Other teams would die to have our youth core

It's been a good year for this team so far. They have some good teams that are ahead of them that they have to catch. It's a tall order for sure but they could dig deep and get it done. It's going to be fun to watch.

 

[Android 16]

I feel that we have already turned heads and progressed. Now we have to continue progressing. We could shock everyone and make playoffs. Or we could just miss and get a damn good scoring prospect.
Or we could bomb out and get a great future stud. I feel we either make or just miss playoffs. This is an improvement. People should be happy with that as long as next year we take another step forward. We have to put our mind set with our core guys... Other teams would die to have our youth core

It's not unreasonable to think between Petrovic, Weegar, Matheson, McCoshen, Downing (who no one says a word about and is developing great) and Racine that at least 1-2 of those guys could be NHL regulars. So, the hard part is figuring out which goes and which stays before their value gets stale. Dale will hopefully turn some of those defensive prospects into offensive additions via a trade. Asset management is Dale's challenge throughout the next couple of seasons. We clearly needs offensive help. Everyone knows it and I guarantee opposing teams talk about how they can shut us down by limiting our chances to next to nothing. That's how we get beat because the opposition knows we can't score 2 out of the first 4-6 shots the majority of the time. It takes us like a 30-50 shot effort to get 2 or 3 goals. It's pathetic and teams are well aware. If we figure out some way to bolster the offense under the Luongo era (a window that's rapidly closing), we could be a really great team.

 

[CatscratchFever]

I parenthesized the NHL rankings to highlight the primary problem with this team. On average, every team in the NHL has at least 3 players on their team that has more points than our top scorer. Sure, we need secondary scoring, sure you can almost not have Ekblad in this group for how outstanding he's been as a rookie. Unless we see much, much more from these guys mainly, as well as the others, we won't come anywhere close to where we all want them to be. The postseason. This is actually pretty pathetic. How is this team even in the conversation?

Bjugstad: 27 pts, 15 goals(111th)
Huberdeau: 25 pts(136th)
Ekblad: 25 pts(136th)
Jokinen: 24 pts(151st)
Hayes: 20 pts, 13 goals(197th)
Barkov: 11 pts(348th).

The reason I brought this over from the pre-game thread is because I wanted to hear some opinions about this, but it got locked. Can it improve enough this season? Are we going to have to wait until next year? Is this an anomaly?