The room was broken is the excuse. They are the ones making excuses for a poorly constructed team. Did the crap between hoff and Karlsson's spouses cause issues, sure, was the team going to be good without those issues, highly un-freaking-likely. Everybody saw the gaping holes in the lineup going into the year. The only hope was Karlsson continuing where he left off, but that wasn't going to happen after surgery.
The team quite obviously over-performed the year we made it to the ECF not to mention caught a lot of breaks in terms of opponents getting injured, and then it got significantly worse on paper, and the guy carrying the team all that year came back from surgery unable to do what he used to do. You can deny that all you want and blame it on the room, but clearly fixing the room only made things worse as this team is doing worse than last years edition with far better goaltending.