I will start off by saying that the only way this team surprises is IF we can find a top 4 PM RHD. It could be a stop gap guy like Subban or a young unproven guy like Lundkvist but we have to fill that role and shore up the right side before we can consider this team surprising anyone. All that aside, IMO we are a bubble team if everyone is healthy, should we get into a playoff spot comfortably by the TDL, I think you have to run with it. We all saw what Price and Weber were able to do the last time we made it. So if we are in the playoffs comfortably by the deadline there is no turning back just go for it.

I would argue that if any 2 of these players blow our expectations out of the water we will make the playoffs:

Slafkovsky
Dach
Barron
Harris
Guhle
Schueneman

I have to disagree with you on this.
Our division is strong, the east is stronger in general.
It would need more than any 2 of those players.

More on my last point.

We were 53 points out of the playoffs!
We had 55 pts!
And the 3 teams ahead of us that didn't make the playoff got better, more than we did.
Obviously we can't know the impact of all these changes in our division and if Price is at 100% all bets are off but...

Buffalo
Detroit and
Ottawa all improved to a greater extent than us.[/quote]

I don't think that last statement is necessarily true, I believe on paper they improved more than us over the summer but the real question is how far behind them were we really to begin with? With a healthy roster for even half a season and a better coach with an actual system, we're really a last place team or we're we more of a bubble team and now everyone behind us may have improved but we may also have improved greatly via just having a healthy lineup. So are they further ahead, did they just close the gap or did they just improve to maintain the gap? No one really knows until the season starts, we have potentially 7 forwards who could score 25 goals minimum (Gallagher, Dadonov, Hoffman, Anderson, Caufield, Slafkovsky, Suzuki), they all most likely won't but they all do have the potential to. Even if you restrict Price to 50 games and he only wins at a 50% rate that is 25 wins and 50 points. Say Allen plays the remaining 32 games and only wins at a 50% rate that would still equate to 16 wins and another 32 points. That is a total of 82 points on the conservative side. 82 points last year would have had the Habs finish 18 points back of the Caps for the last WC spot in the East. NYI finished in the first non WC position last year with 84 points. I used the 50% win rates based on what both goalies had done over the last 2 seasons excluding last year to be conservative. This shows that with the average performances by our goalies, we have been getting over the previous 2 years that we could easily be in the hunt for a WC spot, factor in better production up front and we could actually win a WC.

EDIT*** The above is based solely on our goaltending being better it does not take into account better production from the forwards or the MSL "effect". The question becomes can we get an additional 12-15 more wins to push us to the 100 point mark, it might be pretty optimistic but I don't think it is unrealistic.