The roots of my optimism are non-trivial:
- Lefebvre was replaced with Bouchard two years ago. In recent years they've also stockpiled a lot of picks.
- The youth/farm system is progressing more rapidly than anticipated.
- The Habs defeated the Penguins, and are now putting up a strong fight against the best team in the conference.
- The Habs have enough cap space to manoeuver.
- The team's primary area of weakness, the wings, is only contextually weak. Of Tatar, Domi, Gallagher, and Drouin, I expect that three of them have substantial trade value.
The situation is not desperate.
Nothing in your arguments should lead you to believe we're actually going to become a strong team.
1) Bouchard replaced Sly, ya, but the book is still unwritten regarding his ability to develop our players.
Sure, it's cool to see more younger players possibly make the league but the Poehling, Fleury, Juulsen, etc...aren't major players.
2) Our youth progressing more rapidly? Well that's pretty subjective and debatable. KK had a great rookie year, then a step back. Suzuki had a great rookie year...maybe his second season will be more difficult like KK...other than them, there isn't a prospect who's progressing quicker than anticipated...actually maybe even the opposite, I expected Brooks to do better, Juulsen I thought would be a mainstay NHLer by now....so ya...not exactly as you paint it.
3) I can't believe you are seriously taking beating the Pens as some type of argument. And we've played like crap vs the Flyers except for one game. Heck, we didn't even score in half of the games! How can you possibly be taken serious with this mate? Come on.
4) Habs have had cap space for like 3 years, we've done nothing with it. It's completely trivial at this point as shown by previous years.
5) Our primary area of weakness is a massive lack of cohesion on our team. This team needs a big facelift. Too many small similar players, not enough talent, saying our assets have good trade value is irrelevant. Saying Tatar has good trade value means absolutely nothing with whether or not we will improve.
You can be optimistic and hope for the best. It's fine, but I don't think that's an objective way of looking at things.
I don't put lipstick on pigs -- I'm Jewish. f*** pigs. But I'm seeing a kitchen with a lot of great ingredients that's only missing a few vegetables to add flavour. The meat, preferably lamb, and the spices are there.
Disagree. I see a chaotic kitchen. Yup, some nice ingredients here and there, but doesn't mean the meal comes out looking tasty.