what went wrong with years team

They were never expected to be a playoff team, and are still rebuilding. Their record is almost exactly as every analyst thought. That early streak just got everyones hopes up, even though it was mostly luck. So nothing. Just a desperate fan base getting over excited

the lack of a 2C.
bottom 6 depth is abysmal at best.
goaltending.
low end defense.

Buffalo has the ability to put together a very competitive first line, after they role that line, there is nothing. coaching against them has to be relatively easy - just defend against the first line (Eichel, Skinner, Reinhart, Dahlin and Montour) and the game will take care of itself...

Depth and goaltending. Although I do like adding Montour and I think Skinner will resign. Just need some of the young players like Mittlestad and Nylander become reliable NHLers and maybe add another top 4 LHD so you can play Scandella in his proper role as a 5-6 dman.

Their biggest problem is that the Atlantic is the Goliath division in the NHL moving forward. Tampa, Toronto and Boston will remain top teams for the next couple years (I think Boston will fall off in a couple years), then MTL, Florida and Buffalo all have a bunch of young talent in thier system just going to be who develops them properly and makes the right moves to become a contender.

The team was projected to finish with about 79 pts. Only the know nothing local sports writers thought that they were a play off team. Let's take a moment to compare the 8th place team in the eastern conference with Buffalo's team, top 6 forwards, top 2 defensemen and GK
13 Max Domi L 76 26 41 67 9 Jack Eichel C 69 26 49 75
90 Tomas Tatar L 74 23 31 54 23 Sam Reinhart C 74 19 41 60
92 Jonathan Drouin L 75 18 34 52 43 Conor Sheary L 70 13 19 32
11 Brendan Gallagher R 76 33 18 51 53 Jeff Skinner L 74 37 22 59
24 Phillip Danault C 75 11 37 48 29 Jason Pominville R 66 15 13 28
65 Andrew Shaw R 57 18 22 40 71 Evan Rodrigues L 68 9 18 27
Jack, Sam and Jeff are all better but the MTL 2nd 3 are MUCH better than Buffalo's next 3

26 Jeff Petry D 76 11 31 42 26 Rasmus Dahlin D 74 8 32 40
6 Shea Weber D 52 13 18 31 55 Rasmus Ristolainen D 74 5 34 39
I will contend that this year this is still a toss up considering Weber is still Weber

Price v Hutton and Ullmark, how many of you are old enough to remember when Hasek could take good AHL team to playoffs? Well, Price is nearly that good as well.

So MTL top 6 is better than Buffalo's top 6, Buffalo's top 2 defensemen may be bit better but this year I would still take Weber as the best of the 4, then the goal tending not even close.

Back in the middle of December, I told my entire family (about 60 people) that Buffalo would not make the playoffs. I got the usual snickering and my brother told me to cool it because people were getting angry with me. Please tell me, if I could see this why did all of the local sport writers not see it as well.






Yup we have been a one line team all year, as you say easy to defend. Well, our bottom 6 has one of the best PK's in the league, I would not call that "abysmal at best", but everything else is spot on.


Yup, very little contribution from the middle 6 (I do see a spark of hope of Sheary-Rodrigues-Nylander), Ullmark was able to hide his mechanical flaws earlier in the season until the league learned how to exploit them, I did not expect much from Thompson (he should spend next year in the AHL), Mittelstadt has been a huge disappointment, Nylander some how has performed well in the NHL when he could not do it in the AHL.