Yeah I'm cautious. We've been one of the best teams in the league this season. But whoever we face in the 1st round is gonna be a pretty rough opponent. A lot of what made our run possible last season is likely not going to be repeated either.
Tkachuk has been worse this season not just on a production level, but he's been noticeably less physical.
Montour's was our best defenseman in the regular season and arguably the playoffs right behind Tkachuk and Bobrovsky for MVP. He hasn't been close to as impactful this year.
Bobrovsky has actually been pretty elite this year. But yeah what he did last season is a once in a career type of performance.
And of course, our play the past month or two doesn't exactly inspire any confidence.
My two biggest concerns, Chucky shows some flashes but not the same. Montours shoulder surgery messed up his shot and his defense has been bad. Despite all of of kulikovs bad gaffs, Montour leads us in NEGATIVE +/- despite providing a lot of assists. He saved us in game 7 vs Boston, i really hope he can just be even 50% of that.
Kulikov and OEL are bound to mess something up but theyre the bottom d pair so that doesnt bother me as much and are overall solid.
Bobs been playing great all season plus our defense has been much improved (hopefully they lock it down in the playoffs. Even this year hes been god bob - both Vegas games especially the 2nd one, avs, dallas etc. More elite games than bad games by a wide margin, i really cant point to a game outside maybe Tampa & Toronto where he had such a bad game we lost cause of it, and honestly i blame our defense more than him.
We have better depth than last year and our overall team is better, plus another year under Maurices system.
Players that need to step up in the playoffs for us to really go somewhere;
Barkov: Absolute elite player that if he shares some of that elite offense he likes to hide, well do good
Bennett: Slowly coming back to form after a quiet year but came off injuries.
Lundell: Flashes offensively, good defensively but would need some more consistant offense to really help that 3rd line, guy has the talent to do so.
OEL: Hard ask for his age but beginning of this season he looked amazing offensively, and since then has been really quiet with the addition of Ekblad and Montour.
Reino and Swaggy hopefully keep their playoff clutchness going. Hopefully Tank still has that extra gear, was watching some recent highlights of him and he still has that nasty wrister, did good for the rangers depite them losing to NJ.