We've been at this long enough since the 2015 season to know things have to be pretty close to perfect to win a cup.

Hedman is ailing from an injury that will require surgery eventually.
McDonagh is out with something.
Rutta is not fully healthy.
Kucherov and Stamkos returning should help, but players returning from injury have not proven to a silver bullet for all of our problems in past playoffs.

I'm not throwing in the towel, but I am curious what our opinions currently are on our playoff hopes.

Injury update: Barclay Goodrow is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury.

— x - Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) May 9, 2021

I was going to vote optimistically, but I'm going first round exit now.

I think we can beat the Panthers as they don't have a ton of players with playoff experience, but you'd have to be feeling very optimistic for them to beat Florida and Carolina. Not to mention they have looked terrible against Florida this year so maybe they won't even make the 2nd round. I don't see a FLA-TBL series not going at least 6

If they somehow beat Florida with a depleted lineup I think they can beat Carolina. Then it depends on who they get in the "conf" finals. Any one the Canadian teams don't play well against Tampa's style all of the East and West teams do.

It comes down to Vasy. He's been so good this year. 2012 Jonathon Quick style good? A guy can dream.

I agree with Rangsey. If we get past Florida, I like our chances against Carolina. While Carolina is a good team, we have been able to control games against them. Every time we've played Florida it's been like playing with the flood gates open.

If we somehow get out of the division, I have my fingers crossed we see Boston. Pittsburgh and Washington have proven to be formidable teams, Islanders are beatable and probably not as good this year, but Boston has been someone we've been able to keep in check in the past.

That's getting pretty far ahead though. If we don't tighten down the defense, start scoring goals, and cut out Vasy giving up turnover goals then the team will be golfing within 2 weeks.

I hope we get better defensively and Vasy improves his stats against Cats.

I'm going to come back to this and eat my words. I was wrong. This team flipped a switch and it has been fun to watch. I thought indefinitely out on Goodrow meant his time as a Bolt was over though. He's a big part of this team being able to shut down other teams in the playoffs.

Vasy has been great and it's taken Kuch no time to get going. It's crazy how it was almost like watch two different Tampa teams between the two different series.

Vasy! Vasy! Vasy! Vasy!

Hmmm this poll is interesting.

I just registered, so going through old posts...
I hammered Lightning so hard on my pre playoff bet. Paychecks!
You had a lot of reasons to be more optimistic!