Vegas would've lost to us if we could've played them with Skinner in net. We basically got an idea how much easier that would be because they did have Brossoit in net.
Colorado proved they can win with one of the deepest forward groups in the modern NHL era, and then having an embarrassment of riches on their blue line including Makar, Toews, Manson, Byram, etc.
Call me when Holland gets players comparable to that here and sure you can sit there and say "dur hur, Connor you should be bringing home a Cup, no excuses even with our goaltending" then. Until then though it's not even a remotely realistic comparison.
It is a bit upsetting when you see Vegas and Colorado both with absolutely stacked bluelines, wondering why since Pronger the only good defenceman we have traded for is Ekholm. Am I missing someone? Keep in mind while I like Ekholm overall as a player and he is our best defenceman, this guy was playing second fiddle to Josi, has never made an All Star game, and seemed to fold against Vegas with Bouchard surprisingly stepping up and being the defacto go to guy in that series.
We saw one of the reasons Ekholm had never been 'the guy'. He's a real good second pairing type guy, kind of like Nurse in a way. Both guys who can play second fiddle and play it well. Neither should be 'the guy' like Pietro is who is specifically tasked with going up against McDavid types all night.
Our presumed wealth of riches up front dried up. The free agent scoring forwards we brought in did nothing and we were back to being a 2 man club at even strength. We can cite them being hampered with injury, and I'm willing to go with that because Kane did show strong last playoffs, as did Hyman.
It's depressing when we're desperately trying to patch holes on a sinking ship and as soon as we figure we might have solved the leak, another springs at the other end.
If we were to get one more piece somehow at RHD, I really think it would put us in a good spot. That should be a reasonable expectation. I wish we had moved heaven and earth for Karlsson, but I don't know. There's a lot of second tier guys out there like the Ekholm's and Pesce's of the world who are solid players, and are obvious big upgrades on our group, but even with them it's going to be a struggle.
For example I think Vegas' entire D corps is solid. We would have to add two more Ekholm level guys to match them. Colorado is obviously miles ahead on D.
As others have posted about and I've come to agree with only recently, Woodcroft really is the lynchpin here. The strategies in place defensively are either absurd, or our personnel is not good enough to play them properly. Combination of both perhaps. We've seen how Cassidy groups play D in Boston and Vegas. We've seen how each and every player buys in to the physicality and aggressive forechecking (maybe not Pastrnak), but it's a near 100% buy in of hard aggressive play with desperation on every shift to get the puck to the slot and net front.
We simply do not see that style of play here aside from a couple guys. When your leaders are playing a certain way, the rest of the team seems to follow. In Boston they had their leaders in Marchand and Bergeron crashing the net, forechecking hard, backchecking even harder on every single shift. The rest of the guys are held accountable in their hearts and minds. They must put in the same amount of effort. In Vegas you have Marchessault and Eichel, Eichel being considered now as one of the premier defensive centres in the NHL. These guys lead the way and the rest of Vegas, every single man, is playing pucks to the centre of the ice on each entry to create chaos.
McDavid and Draisaitl do not play in this manner, and I wouldn't ask them to. It's simply how they are made up to be. McDavid the speedster beating people wide and doing things we can't expect anyone else in the league to, so the bench looks on in awe. Draisaitl is the much slower, methodical, precision passing type who slows the game down in the offensive zone, stopping up and looking for plays to form or mispositioning.
So when your two leaders play the game in a way that only they can, it leads to a disconnect. You have the rest of the group following suit trying to play the game in a way that they simply aren't built for. Maybe it's hard for them to get up to play a certain aggressive and brutalizing style of reckless abandon when neither of their superstar leaders play that way. It's the catch-22 in my eyes of having a McDavid level player. With the Edmonton of old (correct me if I'm wrong), they had Messier every step of the way demanding more from everyone while Gretzky worked his quiet magic.
We're missing the type of leaders who play like the Bergeron's, Marchand's, and Marchessaults of the world. That style of play can be played by anyone up and down the lineup as we've seen with Vegas and Boston, with L.A. etc.
