Would you much rather me call out that of the 10 best teams in the league, Carolina has the absolute worst record of the bunch playing against the other 10 best teams? Because that’s the case. They’ve feasted on lesser teams more than anyone else in the league this year. The Rangers, on the other hand, are one of the best in the league in that regard. And while Guentzel certainly fills exactly what they needed in finishing ability, he only plays on one line. The problem still exists throughout the rest of their lineup. Teams like Carolina are still the most prone to get “goalie’d” in a series because they rarely deviate from their gameplan of pure shot volume. A goalie like Shesterkin plays his best when seeing a lot of pucks (and from what we saw this year, his worst when he doesn’t face much action). And while Brind’Amour does a great job at home as a coach creating favorable line matchups, he absolutely refuses to change anything about his system when it becomes clear it isn’t working. I think that’s a fatal flaw of his. I’m not calling Carolina frauds. I think they’re one of the best 6 or so teams in the league. I just think the assertion that they’re Cup favorites is ridiculous because I don’t see them as the best team in the league, and I do think most of that belief comes from flimsy public analytics models. Can they win a Cup? Yeah probably. Do I think they will? I’d take the Avs, Florida, Vegas, etc over them in a series. As far as Rangers/Carolina goes, I think Carolina is the slightly better team but NYR has a lot of matchup advantages. It’s likely a coin flip like 2022. And whoever wins, likely sees the same fate the Rangers faced in the ECF in 2022 and Carolina faced in 2023.
Hill is larger, so maybe they think he’ll stand up better to what beat Thompson? Idk. Agreed that mostly everyone on vgk is underperforming. A couple stand out as being exceptionally problematic relative to the others.
its just that they literally aren’t getting better goaltending than this regardless. This is pretty much as good as it gets
Here's my pet theory regarding Thompson and Hill. Almost all of the Dallas goals the last couple games, including the overtime winner, were beating Thompson on the short side. They're similar goals, baiting him into going low early Perhaps VGK is worried that he's been figured out
Sounds like the Stars might call this kid up to replace Lundkvist. Feel for Nils because is good but Deboer hates him and he gets bullied sometimes because he’s smaller. Bichsel on the other hand is massive and has been bullying people for a few years.
I generally agree, and lots of Canes fans do too. The only push back is that we have seen some offensive variation this year, both before and after Guentzel. Jarvis has turned into a true top line guy at 22 years old, and Svechnikov is healthy. We’ve definitely won our fair share of games by blue line bombing and hoping for rebounds, but we’ve also won some close games shooting 20-30 shots and generating grade A’s instead, which is a deviation from prior seasons. The power play being one of the best examples of that skill/system improvement. We were 2nd in the league regular season at 27%, and were at 33% against the Isles, who admittedly suck on the PK. This is easily the most skilled team we’ve had. In years past it was defend, bomb it from deep, and hope Aho does something crazy. Now with Jarvis, Guentzel, and Svech there’s a deeper lineup of guys who can beat playoff caliber defenses/goalies. I do like comparing against other top 10 teams straight up, but it’s a little deceptive with how bad the Canes were in Nov/Dec. Every team has lulls, I get it, but since the Christmas turn around we went 15-9 (I think) against playoff teams. Without looking at the other team’s records, I’d guess that’s pretty competitive. We’ll see if it matters in the end- Rangers/Canes know everything there is to know about each other. But this is definitely the best and most varied team Brind-Amor has had.
Canes are a very good team. One thing id be worried about is paying Rod. They got swept last year and played like shit against the islanders with a mostly fail proof lineup. It’s kinda like what we talked about with Deboer. You can very easily say the stars have the deepest team in the league and he’s on the verge of fucking it up somehow. Same goes for Rod
Eh, he has his faults like any coach but he’s one of 2 coaches to ever win at least 1 round of playoffs for 6 straight years. 2 ECF’s, one unexpected (2019) and one expected (2023). That sweep to Florida involved all 1 goal games, 2 of which went to OT. Losing all 4 sucks but it’s a bounce of the puck thing. Not like we didn’t belong. All while missing 3 of the 6 top forwards for most of the playoffs. Canes and Rod’s real challenge will be next year when half the team leaves in free agency. We’ve kept the core together for most of this 6 year run of success. This summer we’ve got Guentzel, Skjei, Pesce, Chatfield, Necas, Teravainen all as UFA’s, plus Jarvis as an RFA and a couple free agent 4th line guys. Gonna be a lot of turnover. Again, he’s not perfect and hasn’t even made a final yet but you don’t let go of a coach like Rod when you missed the playoffs for 10 years straight before he took over.
I didn’t mean let him go by any means but maybe don’t pay him 8 mil a year either until he wins something substantial is all
Yea this is nonsense but his agent would be an idiot not to use it as leverage. Our GM said it would be done “very quickly” barely an hour ago.
was helleybuck that bad? I did not follow the series but saw some goals that are unstoppable from the avs
Both true. Avs skaters absolutely shelled Hellebuyck and he stopped a few less than he should have. That’s usually the case whenever a team scores that many goals in a series.
Starting games at 630pm local time on a weeknight feels like a major miss. Pretty unfair to local fans trying to get from work to the game