Our number 1 weakness is definitely not Fleury. It's our defense. Guys like Paul Martin, Zbynek Michalek, and even Brooks Orpik need to step it up big time compared to the regular season.
Wow they must have over achieved because they could win the presidents trophy for the 2nd year in a row. Not bad for a team with that many flaws. AV must be the greatest coach ever
I'm interested to hear your critique of other teams.
Just let him troll hate, it helps create that underdog aura for the Canucks.
Well Luongo is either stellar or has complete melt downs, the key thing is hoping AV can use his instinct/psychic thinking to determine which goalie to put in at any given time.
another potential weakness for the Canucks is teams roughing them up for 60+ minutes per game, eventually the ref's just let it happen and the team gets decimated by injuries as the series/playoffs go on.
Luongo usually goes as the team goes. If the team plays well, Luongo will too.
And I don't know about other teams because I don't watch their games, unlike many posters here who seems like they watch every team everytime to know enough that they know about other teams.
NY Rangers: High-end offensive talent. Scoring goals.
Boston: Special teams and depth
Florida: Little bit of everything.
Pittsburgh: Goaltending
Philadelphia: Defense
New Jersey: Goaltending
Ottawa: Goaltending
Washington: Goaltending
Vancouver: Defense
St Louis: Offense. Increased intensity from everybody will hurt them.
Los Angeles: Depth
Nashville: Depth
Detroit: Goaltending and defence
Phoenix: Offense
San Jose: Mental state
Chicago: Goaltending and defence
Goaltending will be a huge problem for some teams.
NY Rangers: Powerplay
Boston: Playing Ottawa
Florida: Not enough experienced defence/Goaltending
Pittsburgh: Can Fleury play as good as before?
Philadelphia: Bryzgalov's playoff history
New Jersey: Defence
Ottawa: Goaltending is questioned. Powerplay/Penalty Kill also
Washington: Goaltending
Vancouver: No Daniel = No Henrik
St Louis: Can't choose between Halak and Elliott
Los Angeles: Offense shows up when it wants too
Nashville: Hmm...
Detroit: Goaltending
Phoenix: Smith is good, but is he ready?
San Jose: Penalty kill, Joe Thornton.
Chicago: Goaltending
Clearly you haven't been watching the Sharks in the playoffs these past two years.
Nice thread, seems to be easier to take a critical look at the teams when one asks about weaknesses.
I'll admit that I know next to nothing about the Blues, so I'm just looking at their roster. It seem that they have very little play-off experience on defense. The top two (by ice time) haven't played a single play-off game previously, and even the most veteran player (Jackman) has only 12 games in three first round exists.
Experience isn't everything, but it tends to be pretty high on the list of things people usually bring up. Is there a reason to think inexperience won't be an issue for the Blues?
Very bad way to word the Vancouver part. Henrik has played unquestionably his best hockey in over a year without Daniel the last 8 games. If you watch the games there can be no argument. Now, if you said Vancouver is missing their best winger and top goal scorer and offense may be a problem, you would be right. But Henrik has driven this team for the past 3 weeks.
I'll do mine:
NY Rangers - Offense beyond the top 4-6ish players. The PP. Will Lundquist's incredible season carry over?
Bruins - The PP. also whether the refs let them make games into a circus or not. Not nearly as good of a team if they can't punch and slash all the time.
Panthers - Scoring, and I don't trust the goaltending at all. I just don't think this team should be in the playoffs. This year is an anomoly imo. Probably the only sweep in the east.
Penguins - The defense isn't anything special, and neither is Fleury IMO.
Flyers - The goaltending. If the goaltending is actually good, then i have them coming out of the east.
Devils - I don't know about Brodeur anymore...and they give up alot of SH goals.
Sens - DEFENSE!!!!!
Capitals - The goaltending, and whether or not everyone shows up and plays as well as they need to.
Canucks - Obviously Daniel's health is a huge concern, but the biggest thing is whether or not AV has the balls to pull the plug on Luongo before it gets too late. 1 game lost because of him has to be as far as it gets. Anything beyond that and we may as well have traded Schnieder.
Blues - The lack of a real single offensive threat and high end talent. This is a good team, but i don't know if they can turn it up when games get intense and they need a goal bad. I really saw that in their game against Detroit the other day.
Coyotes - Similar to St Louis, but to a much large extent. I don't think there is enough talent in any position other than goaltending for them to be a threat to really any team. The Florida of the west.
Nashville - Not very big. Deep but not much high end talent up front. No real weaknesses other than that.
Red Wings - their fans laugh at the age thing, but it has to be true at some point. Howard has had some stinky games in the playoffs too. But there isn't much of a glaring weakness so I won't try to make one up.
Chicago - The goalending is horrific. And the defense is really weak other than Keith and Seabrook. Other than the big 4 up front, not much depth at all. Down the middle especially is hurting big time.
Sharks - The bottom 6 and goaltending. I think the bottom 6 was the biggest culprit for them losing to the Canucks last year.
Kings - The system they play i guess. I don't know why else they can't score more goals with the bodies they have up front.
I know you are a Canucks fan, but really, the Canucks turned that series into a circus and the Bruins made them pay for it.
What happened first? The Canucks bit, taunted, and delivered a season ending headshot before Boston did much of anything.
Pardon my pun, but the Canucks bit off more than they could chew.
Well my point was that their top players apart from Kesler aren't good defensively. IIRC Roloson was second in playoff sp% or maybe first prior to that series. Even after that brutal series. And he played the Caps and a weakened Pens squad.
Chicago was gutted AND had injury trouble so yes. Nashville had a team that was made up of a mix of three superstars and a few mediocre-average players. Philly if their goalies could stop a beachball locker room troubles wouldn't matter they'd possibly have repeated with a team like theirs. Giroux-Carter-Briere-Richards as centers. A 60-80 point forward on every line with respectable wingers.
Are you talking about last years team or this years?
If last year I'll somewhat agree, but defence wasn't main the problem, scoring was.
Now if you are talking about this years team I have to completely disagree and point to the likes Hansen, Higgens, Pahlsson, Malhotra, Burrows, Lapierre and the drastically unrated defensively skilled Raymond.
I think Nashville is plenty tough with Weber, Klein, Gill, Boullion, gaustad, tootoo, spaling, hornguist, bourque, erat and fisher.
Nashville's weakness, at least in the first round will be the fact that they will not have a winged wheel or indian on their sweater (refs)
Nashville's weak spot is not coming out with jump. On ice, not many weak spots. Offense is good, pp is good, pk is good, have a gamebreaker, have depth, have the best d pair in the league. It is between the ears with this crew
if that is your toughness then toughness is a weakness for Nashville. ever since hartnell/timmonen we're scooped up, lack of toughness has been a staple of Trotz teams
I'd disagree on Klein and Bourque but I'd agree with the rest, both of those every bit as tough as Hartnell. I'd say Klein is probably the best fighter of all of them as Hartnell is a awful fighter.
I'd say in the toughness department with the Predators, Fisher, Tootoo, Gaustad, Weber and I guess Gill just because he's so big are the first ones that come to mind.
As far as the guy saying size is Nashville's problem, I think that's a joke. Weber, Gaustad, Gill are all very large guys, Fisher, AK, Wilson, are all pretty big too.
Hornqvist isn't going to fight, but in front of the net not many are tougher.
I think for Detroit its easily special teams....injuries to Eaves and Helm really hurt the PK badly, and the PP has been terrible...Ian White seemed to fill the Rafalski void nicely early in the season and is a pretty good replacement in many areas, but as far as the PP is concerned....the Wings dearly miss Rafalski.
Flyers - The goaltending may be considering a question mark, but I think their biggest weakness (aside from injuries, but that's not really a weakness) is the PK.
NY Rangers: Reliance on Lundquist
Boston: Injuries (primarily I feel that Rask being out for the last while and foreseeable future might have a negaitve impact on TT)
Florida: Long list of things
Pittsburgh: Defense, lose a lot if Crosby has any set backs
Philadelphia: Goaltending
New Jersey: Goaltending
Ottawa: Playoff experience
Washington: Effort, team play, goaltending
Vancouver: Power play has been awful recently, 2nd line scoring
St Louis: Scoring, recent home loses could be disheartening
Los Angeles: Scoring
Nashville: No elite level scoring, Rinne has played a lot this year (fatigue?)
Detroit: Team speed, away record
Phoenix: Brilliant coaching covers for a lack of team talent
San Jose: Goaltending, secondary scoring
Chicago: Goaltending, Toews health
Nashville's biggest weakness is our lack of finishing ability. Radulov is the only true finisher we have.
What this means is the Preds have to come out every game with lots of energy, and charge the net for dirty goals. All of our beautifully setup plays typically end up as turnovers / shots turned aside because we just don't have enough guys with great hands.
When the Preds realize that from the beginning of the game, we can be very, very difficult to beat. But when we come out trying to play a finesse game and get down a few goals, sometimes it's too late by the time we realize the pass-pass-pass-fumbled-turnover strategy isn't working.
Philly- Consistency. Besides the goalie (which could be either a tower of strength or a tower of swiss cheese) injuries have caused us to rely heavily on rookies. I dont know the exact stats, but we have to have one of the youngest and least experienced playoff teams right now. Also penalties. Have to stay out of the box to beat the Pens. We have taken a lot of penalties in the regular season, and dont have an especially good PK.
Pitsburgh-Goaltending is not a weakness. It has been an issue this year because I believe Fleury is being exposed by the team's over emphasis on high powered offense. Fleury seems to get little to no help from the forwards who often get caught deep. You see them hustling back, but they are often still too little too late. The D has not been super either in their own zone. So far Philly has been one of the few teams to capitalize on this in the regular season and not get burned by the Pens offensive firepower.
Wow they must have over achieved because they could win the presidents trophy for the 2nd year in a row. Not bad for a team with that many flaws. AV must be the greatest coach ever
I'm interested to hear your critique of other teams.
Well let's see. They had the two worst teams in the league in their division and two other pretty bad teams. I'd say that helps their regular season wouldn't you?
Playing 24 games against what's possibly the weakest opponents in the league is helpful. In the past three years only four times had made the playoffs from their division. The canucks and colorado(as an #8 seed). St. Louis and NYR face much tougher compeition and this year have a similar amount of points. And those teams both beat them in ROW.
NY Rangers: Will there depth scorers be there?
Boston: No Rask, means it's Thomas or bust
Florida: Inconsistent scoring
Pittsburgh: Letang's injury prone, if he's out, they wont make it deep
Philadelphia: Goaltending
New Jersey: Defense is young, inexperienced
Ottawa: Inconsistent
Washington: Streaky
Vancouver: Mental fortitude. They had a long year, can they keep it up?
St Louis: No game breaker offensively
Los Angeles: Reliance on Quick
Nashville: Scoring ability
Detroit: Not physical enough, and not as talented as past teams
Phoenix: Can they get enough goals?
San Jose: PK
Chicago: Without Toews, who will step up
Clearly you haven't been watching the Sharks in the playoffs these past two years.
