Was at the game tonight with my fiance and family. First game we've been to in 4-5 years since the Lou era. Noticable difference in the atmosphere and arena etc.
The quick goal was great, but it was painful afterwards. Kills me to hear my family say the team is boring and sits on leads(family is a hockey family as my brother and I played hockey. My brother played in college).
The team just doesn't have the talent to compete. Simple as that. Made so many mistakes. The defense is extremely poor. The offense outside of a couple forwards isn't able to compete the way it needs too. Cory is a great foundation piece, Hall is as well(He can't carry a team like a Crosby tho, which is fine, he's a great great player, but not at that level), Wood is a good piece, Severson im 50/50 on, Zacha I can see being a top 6 player, Rico was good at times(horrible when he was on defense and didn't take the man and got deked out of position) and maybe a couple of others(cammy was terrible tonight)...there are just a lot of floating pieces and I am not sure who the "core players are" on this team outside of a few going forward.
Shero has his work cut out for him. It's gonna take 2-3 more years to get this team fixed. The drafted players is a good start, but its going to take more.
Just my 2 cents. Was fun to be at the Rock again tho, just sucked the team was holding on to that 2-1 lead. You CAN'T do that against that team. Even Hall said that in the postgame.
What is even worse is, we aren't bad enough to get a McDavid(There's no generational player in the draft this year) and we aren't good enough to make the playoffs. We're stuck in mediocrity.