you could feel this one coming. there was some good - the mika line had chances. for the first time all year there laf was ready and looked really good there. he was on the puck, created, battled...he looked the part. jones looked ok, he's not as fast as i thought he was, but he was confident with the puck and played a solid game overall, could see he's a heady player. kravtsov was again excellent. the kids overall were good.
there was real bad. on the flip side the strome line was an absolute calamity. couldn't get out of their zone all night. kreider is a disaster. the d was nowhere near their usual without trouba and the pairings scrambled.
i think overall we showed we're not a playoff team. thats fine, it was always a stretch, i do hope we can right the shift enough to keep games meaningful to the end. not making it is fine, theres been a lot of overall progress, the youth is legit. but what is concerning is the lack of an attitude, like we need this we're taking it sort of persona from the older players. obviously you have to envision the kids like laf and kakko have that kind of fire when they grow into it, but its disappointing that hasn't been evident in any of the vets. its been good to see us not let anyone push us around this year, but thats not enough...any good team needs to be able to take on that mentality to take it to other teams. to be clear i'm not looking for hits and scrums etc...ideally you have more elements than 0 that add some presence there, but what i mean is a team taking control. forcing the issue, forcing the game they want to play on the other team - driving through players, consistently winning puck battles etc. we're improving but if we want to compete for real next year that has to change. its a stretch to think the kids are ready for that, so if the mika/buch/kreider/strome group isn't capable of showing signs of that, i think there's significant changes coming. i don't know what that could mean, but thats certainly going to be addressed.