Yeah, I'm not saying that's what I want. Because give me Jack Hughes all day.
I just have a feeling not everyone is going to have a **** year again.
I'll wait till October to see what the final roster looks like as I got to think a trade or two are coming between now and then. But I think this team will be a good bit better then many think. I want a top 3 pick badly so I bet we end up picking 10th or so.
I'd agree if the roster was healthy. But without Weber for a few months plus more time to get back to speed, and without Byron and Shaw to start the season, we're likely to have a rough first half. The wildcards, naturally, are the rookies and young players who might surprise. It's hard to imagine the Habs being carried by its homegrown draft picks, but hopefully we'll start seeing that in a couple of years...
We should hear more on the injuries if they stick to the "new" transparency.
Byron is expected to be back around the 18th, if that ends up being correct he'll miss 6 games.
Shaw is expected to be back around the 25th, if that ends up being correct he'll miss 8 games.
Weber is expected to be back between Nov 19th and Dec 19th so that is the big one, if he's back around Nov 19th he would miss 20 games, if it's Dec 19th then we are looking at 34 games.
The defense is the main problem unless Price sucks again cause I would be surprised if Niemi is anything close to what he was with us last year.
If you have say,
Mete Petry
Reilly Schlemko
Alzner Juulsen
Benn
that isn't pretty for between say 20 to 35 games, so it would likely come down to how much closer to 20 or better it is vs the latter. Then we would need to see what kind of shape and impact the injury had on Weber is.
If you have,
Reilly Weber
Schlemko Petry
Mete Juulsen
Alzner
depending on how Weber looks, how much production we get from Reilly (cause I think he's going to do well if given high TOI and the right partner), if Schlemko is better then he was last year, if Mete and Juulsen make the team and do well (although I prefer them to be in the AHL but I don't believe we are rebuilding) that defense could surprise but lots of questions and I don't think they will have the balls to move Alzner to 7th D while making 6M in salary.