1 glaring factor to me is in the west, only 6 teams miss the playoffs. Right off the bat, Arizona Edmonton fell off so your down to 4 teams that are in the hunt right?
Colorado got off the a slow Start, Dallas too and injury to Seguin hurt them bad. LA seemed tired really, too much hockey and San Jose had a bad off-season with the Thornton thing.
In the East, 8 teams miss, remove Buffalo and you are at 7. And those are the only teams that were "bad" from the jump, yes even Toronto, they were fine till they fired their coach.
Other thing, Hartley is a world class coach and Maurice isnt too shabby himself, I'd take either one in a heart beat. but to be honest, the Jets are good and I had them in from the jump. Calgary, Hartley made such a difference there cannot say that enough.
Ottawa, they just got their games into overtime and just had enough to get the bonus point. see how many 3 point games they had down the stretch. but give them credit, hammond and Karlsson were huge.
And for us, I will point at the Mitchell injury as the stretch where we could have gained more points (don't bring up the 1 point set we had, it happens, teams slump).
Our PK was laughable without Mitch and our defense took a noooooooossseee dive. And Pirri being made of glass, could have used his goal scoring all year.
But, having said all that, if this team wasn't a bubble team at the TDL, don't think the Jagr trade would have happened. We didn't make it, but we come out ahead.
Now we got Jagr, it worked, keep him, miss now, next year we come out loud and make explosions.
We end this year by putting the league on notice.