The reason they got beat by the rangers was because Louis Domingue was their goalie, because Jacob Trouba is a dirty headhunter, and because of the missed helmet rip-off in game 7. Not because the team lacked toughness. If you look at the analytics, Pitt absolutely dominated the rangers and lost due to a series of unfortunate events,

I keep seeing Petterson to Detroit for a 3rd (sometimes 4th or 2nd).

No. There is no need to pay for a bottom 4 D. Detroit has plenty. Staal, Hronek, Lindstrom. Walman still needs more looks. Oesterle is no good, but ironically Seider seemed to play well with him. There are plenty of lower cost options than Pettersen.

Just tired of all the same assumptions that Detroit will pay for every teams cap dump for players in the bottom half of the roster.

Fine I’ll take a just a 2nd or zadina

Penguins have Jarry the entire series they probably would’ve won in 5 games. Even with DeSmith they win that series. Penguins lost because we blew a 3-1 series lead with Louis Domingue in net. But okay

I’m also not paying Val more than Jake freaking Guentzel are you out of your mind?!?!?!

Detroit accepts, player useful.

According to NaturalStatTick the Pens had 205 hits at 5v5 compared to the Rangers 187. I actually don't think this team is bad, but they didn't get beat up last year or lose because of little toughness.

The pens had an AHL goalie in net and had some bad luck… they did alot of great things like get in the Vezina goalies head and dominate a deeper more skilled faster younger team… they are nowhere near Colorado but with a couple smart moves they can get better next year to increase their chances of getting out of the first round

I agree with this 100%. We need more toughness. It's not the only reason we lost, but it's one of them. We have the most injuries of any team every season, big stars being taken out in playoffs. I wonder if us not having anyone to stand up to guys like Trouba is the issue and the reason teams take cheap shots on us. If we had 1-2 tougher players who could stand up and deter it maybe things would be different.

I think you bring up very valid points, we definitely would have won earlier with Jarry in net, but on the other hand I think this ACGM also brings up very going points in the sense that I think we need to plan more for adverse scanerio's. Would we have beaten the Islanders the year before if not for Jarry's play? Probably, very likely. But we also did get bullied by them physically and the Rangers took a ton of cheap shots. IMO if we wan't to ensure the best chance at competing we add 1-2 physical guys (maybe one skilled/physical like Marchment and one more enforcer like Deslaurias) and then also bring a better backup like MAF. That way we cover all of our bases and adress what have been issues the past 2 years, backup goaltending and lack of physicality/teams taking liberties on us. Even if we would've won despite being dominated physically the past 2 years it's still nice to have.