This team has to be just as good as last year. Perron and Neal out. Pacioretty and Stasny in? All those draft picks did go pretty quickly though. Goaltending will be a potential area of concern, if anything.

They just paid that price for Pacioretty and he is only going to play on their 2nd line... ouch.. Guess that's a good thing though

I can easily see Max starting on the 2nd line and bumping R.Smith off of that first line after 10-15 games. Chemestry is an important thing, sure, but Pac's 3 times better than R.Smith and would complément Willy and Marchy way better. But! Having a true sniper on each of your 2 first line (Karlsson & Pacioretty) is also very enticing. Remember that Kessel plays mostly on the 2nd and 3rd line, P.Kane played on the 2nd line for a long time, Malkin always played 2nd line center, N.Backstrom is a 2nd line center, P.Laine plays on the second line, M.Barzal was a 2nd line center last year, so on so forth