CaptDenisPotvin
The Tampa Bay Astros are your 2021 Champions
- Jun 20, 2007
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No, the point is that there is no one way to win a championship in today's NHL, where the league has deemed more scoring and entertainment is going to be the focus (as we see with the way penalties are called for hindering movement).
Under the current way of officiating, we are not going to win with a defense-first approach, as those stats show on the chart. How many of us would believe that we would be outscoring a team with Crosby, Malkin, Guetzel, Letang and Karlsson? I doubt any of us would have predicted that. And the Pens give up 0.4 LESS GOALS than we do, but we are 7 points ahead of them.
This is the point. When the league shows their hand, take it seriously. The GAA league-wide has gone up the last 3 years and is now 2.96, while the league-wide save % is down to .903 this year (we are at .911, so the focus on spending money on the goalies is smart so far). It no longer is about defense being the determinant.
When we went to the ECF the first time, we had a -1 goal differential in the regular season, it isn't as simple as you state. A few bad losses in 82 games skews that stat. Tampa is currently a minus and Detroit is a plus, but Tampa is ahead of them.
I agree that the league is changing and its fairly obvious you either score at a high rate on the PP or your a bad team. HOWEVER their are a few terrible habits this team has played through and HAS to get better at if they wanna make a run at this thing. In the 3rd period it looks like our dman can not make a first pass out of the zone, it costs us constantly. losing assignments in the dzone are still happening way to much but better than early in the season. the PK is obvious but Pelech/Pulock/Mayfield being out is the reason imo. Their are things we need to clean up even with changes to the style of play in the NHL, doesn't mean we can't have clean breakouts from the dzone. Our forecheck is our main strength IMO 5 on 5.