I don't understand the bolded. The pesky Sens were awesome, as was Hamburlgar and Lazar eating hamburger off ice..I also remember the rather quick and painful first round exit against the Habs. In any case, I definitely don't want to see some sort of a run that results in the team missing out on a top pick this draft.
Sorry but that's ridiculous. Damn Blues, if they didn't turn their season around last year, they could have had a top-3 pick!
The goal is to win hockey games, make the playoffs and then fight to go as far as possible, like the Sens just did 2-3 years ago.
The only time tanking is legit is in a season like this one, where we were forced into a massive firesale, aka trading our legit stars for futures to save money and go in a full rebuild. Outside of a particular reason like that, tanking is Pejorative Slured. A team that had solid vets like Karlsson, Turris, Ryan, MacArthur, Michalek, Methot, Anderson and a few rising stars/prospects like Stone, Zibanejad, Hoffman, Pageau, Lehner, Ceci really shouldn't and wouldn't deserve getting a 1st OA pick. Sens made the playoffs in 2011-12 & 2012-13 (beat the Habs in 1st round) and then missed by a few points (they had 88 pts) in 2013-14. They were never supposed to be a bottom-5 team in 2014-15 and turned things around before the end of the season (a season is 82 games and not 52 games or whatever) and finished with 99 pts. The most pathetic for any athlete is quitting. I don't care if they don't finish 1st but quitting is lame.
Yes Hammond had a great run but at that time I was already saying that I didn't have much faith in him as a long-term solid goalie, still saw him as a back-up. The turn around was more on the Stone and Hoffman breakouts, as well as some vets turning it up a notch.
Seriously, I'm not really enjoying this morning reading that "we should have tanked" in a season where we got 99 pts.
And you can rest easy, because it's not happening this year, unless they call up all the best prospects, give them all the opportunities and then they break out all at the same time, which won't happen.