I don't know why you guys are freaking out about blown leads. You have a really young team comprised of a lot of new pieces. Teams like this have to learn how to win. The hallmark of any young team like this is learning how to close out games and how to win basically. The fact this team is competing and all your young guys look good and are producing should have all of you thrilled. This pretty much how this should be going and you all should be thrilled.
You are absolutely right. Watching the post game video, Babcock mentioned it was the vets who were making the mistakes. Well to me that's just fine because I don't consider many of the vets to even be in the short term plans for this team. We have our core, we still have a large group of young players in the AHL and juniors who will be pounding on the door to make the team next year and the only vet on the team I see sticking around is Kadri, maybe Gardiner. The rest will be replaced through trade or promotions from within.
With that in mind, the kids are doing great, both Matthews and Nylander sit 1 and 2 for scoring among rookies and Marner has looked dangerous every game and should probably have twice the points he has now. Also, Zaitsev is transitioning well, Brown and Hyman are killing it on the penalty kills. Seriously, what's not to like? Besides our goaltending, which I also expect will improve as team defense improves, the problem areas like Hunwick, Polak, Bozak etc will be gone in a year or two. Until then, they can take the heat as our core learns how to work together and shut down these games their leading in.
Yes it would be nice to stop blowing the leads in the 3rd but on the positive side, the team has scored 4 goals a game in every game but one. Eventually that's going to be enough to win most of the time.
