banter seems a bit more vicious this year
maybe all the losing during the season took the toll on some on you.
There's a few folks who have very consistently beat the drum that Howard can't get it done in the playoffs, and subsequently, does not deserve to be signed long term.
How you view that situation depends entirely if you think the Wings have done anything to help him at all.
I'm of the opinion he's not a Lundqvist, but hey, he's good enough if the team can actually score more than 1 goal.
That's fine when you're making $2.5M a year. He's a big boy now.
Technically, he's still under the old deal so you should feel like you're getting a value.
I disagree, a large majority didn't think they would even make the playoffs. Go look through some of the older threads. With your we can play better statement I'm sure Ducks fans are saying the same thing. Effort wasn't the issue it was bad decisions, in my opinion. But if you haven't noticed by now it because an argument of semantics.
Another problem is our bottom-six has no identity. Look at Anaheim with the speed and scoring (3rd line being their shutdown line) or LA with the big in-your-face grinders. Our bottom-six is really underwhelming. They don't provide much physicality, speed or scoring. They don't do much at all to change the outcome of the game.
Come to think of it, our entire team doesn't have an identity. Mostly just a bunch of misused spare parts.
All you need to do is look at our record during April to see we are not a good hockey team. We beat ONE playoff team in April: the LA Kings on April 24th.
We only had 3 wins against playoff teams in March.
All told 10 of our 24 wins came against playoff-caliber teams. We had our worst home record since the Dead Wings era.
The roster just isn't where it needs to be in order to compete with the best teams in the league. We will need Jimmy to stand on his head to have any shot at being competitive in this series.
The mgihty Hawks scored how many? Right, just 1 PP goal. (OT winner)
Wild scored 1 goal. Lost
Blues scored 1 goal
Kings scored 1 goal Lost
Canucks scored 1 goal Lost
Wings scored 1 PP goal Lost
Ducks scored 2 PP goals (1EN)
Sharks scored 3 goals.