Playoff Race/Standings

[Sky04]

Yes, thank you. Not only will Vegas have better D options, they won’t have many, if any, forwards as good as Killorn or Vlady to choose from that are exposed. The only way Vegas picks a Dman from us is if SY get Callahan to waive his NMC and both Killorn and Vlady are protected. Or, we trade a forward before the expansion draft.

Um yes... my point exactly? Why would we want to do Vegas any favors? Trade a forward we'd lose for assets and protect the other forcing them to take one of our ****** d-men..

 

[Leonardo87]

Yes, thank you. Not only will Vegas have better D options, they won’t have many, if any, forwards as good as Killorn or Vlady to choose from that are exposed. The only way Vegas picks a Dman from us is if SY get Callahan to waive his NMC and both Killorn and Vlady are protected. Or, we trade a forward before the expansion draft.

You really want to protect both Vladdy and Killorn?

 

[The Gongshow]

So this 3rd loss in a row means

-shut down Stamkos for good for the season, no need now
-bye bye playoffs.

 

[RDTBay4]

If we lose nearly all of the games left we have a good chance at a top pick. Look at the bright side.

 

[Kramerica Industries]

Pretty much. The Lightning have picked up 25 of the last 32 possible points. That's a .781 points percentage, which comes out to about 128 points over a full season. Pretty sure no one's done that since the '96 Red Wings. Point being, this hot streak will eventually cool just a bit. They've needed this recent stretch just to get back into a position to have a chance. There will be a drop off at some point, but it can't be too substantial or they'll be cooked.

No margin for error.

It was always gonna happen. Oh well.

 

[The Macho King]

We are a bubble team as long as Bazooka Coop is behind the bench.

 

[dechire]

If we lose nearly all of the games left we have a good chance at a top pick. Look at the bright side.

Not really. There's a 10+ point gap gap between Tampa and the bottom 5 teams right now. We'll pick around 10th overall.

 

[The Macho King]

The problem is Cooper hears bubble team and thinks "delicious".

 

[Sky04]

Not Cooper's fault, no leaders to lead us imo.

 

[The Gongshow]

Not Cooper's fault, no leaders to lead us imo.

Lack of depth is killing us.

Vasi also hasn't helped. He hasn't stepped up to the challenge and bail the team out like Bishop did so many times.

Vasi exposes how bad our D really is, Bish covered quite a bit of that up

 

[Five Alarm Fire]

Sigh. We probably needed a longer offseason anyways.

 

[dechire]

Not Cooper's fault, no leaders to lead us imo.

Hedman, Stralman, Boyle and Flip for most of the season, Johnson, Kucherov ???????

 

[The Macho King]

Lol. Lack of depth is not killing us. We are playing well now considering our lineup.

A lackadaisical first 50 games is killing us.

 

[The Gongshow]

7 months till a new season

 

[Sky04]

Lol. Lack of depth is not killing us. We are playing well now considering our lineup.

A lackadaisical first 50 games is killing us.

The hell are people talking about "not enough depth".

Filppula had 36 points, Brayden Point has 29 as a rookie, Namestnikov has 25, Boyle had 13 goals, and this is from guys spending most of the year on 2nd/3rd lines.

This team didn't get enough from their top-6 this year, guys like Palat, Johnson, and Killorn not pulling their weight, even Drouin should've been better this season. Part of this is Coopers stupid use of "evening out the talent" by placing scrubs with stars.

We have more than enough talent in the top-6 with Drouin, Johnson, Palat and Kucherov to win more games than we did. Secondary scoring from forwards was not nearly as big a deal as the lack of any scoring from the defense outside of Hedman, you could see this going wrong Yzerman started signing "defense" first guys instead of puck movers.

 

[JoVel]

Yeah it seems like Boston is now the one to catch and not Toronto. You never know but I just don't believe in it anymore.

 

[MattM92]

Currently sit at 10.8%. Need to go 8-2-0 to have at least a 70% chance. 10-0-0 isn't even a guarantee anymore, puts us at 99.9%.

 

[Five Alarm Fire]

The hell are people talking about "not enough depth".

Filppula had 36 points, Brayden Point has 29 as a rookie, Namestnikov has 25, Boyle had 13 goals, and this is from guys spending most of the year on 2nd/3rd lines.

This team didn't get enough from their top-6 this year, guys like Palat, Johnson, and Killorn not pulling their weight, even Drouin should've been better this season. Part of this is Coopers stupid use of "evening out the talent" by placing scrubs with stars.

We have more than enough talent in the top-6 with Drouin, Johnson, Palat and Kucherov to win more games than we did. Secondary scoring from forwards was not nearly as big a deal as the lack of any scoring from the defense outside of Hedman, you could see this going wrong Yzerman started signing "defense" first guys instead of puck movers.

Pretty sure he's talking about the current roster, and he's right. You can't keep winning when you have one and a half scoring lines.

 

[AlphaCatalyst]

I know it does not need be said/repeated but, even with injuries this team has or should have had enough talent to beat teams like Vancouver, Colorado and Arizona. Those blown games are a big factor the team is where it's at.

 

[LTIR Trickery]

Lol. Lack of depth is not killing us. We are playing well now considering our lineup.

A lackadaisical first 50 games is killing us.

Lack of defensive depth, maybe. Also, timely goaltending. Guys couldn't stop a puck for **** to start the year, both goaltenders floated around .900 for most of the season. We give a lot of **** to Dallas for this reason, and while we haven't quite had as bad of goaltending, its still enough to throw you off course.

No sense in complaining about making it to the finish this season, time to sort out your offseason plan and get us another top four defender.

 

[LTIR Trickery]

I know it does not need be said/repeated but, even with injuries this team has or should have had enough talent to beat teams like Vancouver, Colorado and Arizona. Those blown games are a big factor the team is where it's at.

Truth.

 

[These Are The Days]

Hedman, Stralman, Boyle and Flip for most of the season, Johnson, Kucherov ???????

No it's a snarky potshot directed towards me. [MOD]

It's a long story but to sum it shortly: It's all Coopers fault.

Apparently we were STILL supposed to make the playoffs in light of having Bishop go down after being ravaged by injury from mid November to Christmas. It felt like a death blow and every time we marched out on the ice we played like we were attending a funeral. Nope. Coop should clap his hands and say "come on" and the players are supposed to perk up and say, "Oh **** guys! Coach said come on!" But apparently not having a captain to hold the team together during such a fragile time is acceptable. Especially while guys like Stralman give us all the lip service we want to hear between intermissions with Paul Kennedy but turns around and has a bad game.

And apparently, Cooper is also solely responsible for the Vasilevskiy debacle. The solution was also supposed to throw two barely capable AHL caliber goaltender in Gudlevskis and Wilcox out there to stop the bleeding because the heir apparent to Ben Bishop was playing so bad. Everyone could clearly see this was a team lost in the woods with all of its bad habits (like stupid penalties, over passing, not taking shots) rearing its ugly head. And night after night the only guys who played well was a guy who barely speaks English, a spoiled brat who everyone wanted gone 13 months ago and Victor Hedman. Oh and Boyle too. If he hadn't scored all those goals I can't even imagine how much worse things would have gotten.

Meanwhile Yzerman waited out as long as he could to let the guys do it themselves. We asked for change and it didn't come.

I don't know... I guess Cooper was supposed to get pissed and bench everyone -a tactic I'm sure would have gone over great without a captain to back him up in the decision. Why even have leadership then? Why even have captains if it's not their job to hold the locker room together through a storm like this. At the end of the day the men in the room are Stamkos and Callahan and we didn't have them.

Sure you can go on profanity laced tirades between intermissions like John Tortorella, but that's also why he so easily loses a locker room and why up until this year everyone questioned his viability as a coach anymore.

See, Sky asks all the tough questions but he'll dodge them when asked to him. Watch this... I asked this probably 2 months ago and still hasn't given me an answer.

Who would you have replaced Jon Cooper with in the event of his firing?

 

[Sky04]

Sorry I don't answer your questions, sometimes I need a prescription to read through some of that stuff. And some of the other stuff? [MOD]

I do answer you, you just reply by beating around the bush then firing back an essay. [MOD] who do we replace Cooper with? I dunno? anyone who's a better fit to which Cooper clearly isn't? Considering our position at the time was last in the East there wasn't a lot of people who could've done worse.

 

[Sky04]

Pretty sure he's talking about the current roster, and he's right. You can't keep winning when you have one and a half scoring lines.

Not sure what lack of "depth" has to do with our current situation, in fact "depth" is the only reason we were able to get back in the playoff race.

There's no organization in the league that could hold out with this many injuries.

In yesterdays game, Gourde, Erne, Brown, Witkowski. Dumont and Vermin weren't on the ice for a single goal against and combined for 11 shots on goal. Didn't get on the scoreboard but provided offensive zone time, energy and didn't cost us a goal.

The top-6? Factored into all 3 goals while being a combined -9, all of those guys played poor defensively. Can't win when you're scoring lines are giving up more goals than they're producing.

 

[gg720fla]

Not sure what lack of "depth" has to do with our current situation, in fact "depth" is the only reason we were able to get back in the playoff race.

There's no organization in the league that could hold out with this many injuries.

In yesterdays game, Gourde, Erne, Brown, Witkowski. Dumont and Vermin weren't on the ice for a single goal against and combined for 11 shots on goal. Didn't get on the scoreboard but provided offensive zone time, energy and didn't cost us a goal.

The top-6? Factored into all 3 goals while being a combined -9, all of those guys played poor defensively. Can't win when you're scoring lines are giving up more goals than they're producing.

Exactly, how many times in the last 3 games did our top 6 guys get caught up in the other end and couldn't come back to help an already shaky defense before the other team scored. Watch those guys try and play defense in our end and it looks like they are chasing their tails trying to get the puck from the other team. One thing Cooper said last night is you have to play d along with trying to score if you want to win games. We surely haven't done that as a team the last week.