Quoting: Cowling
Well said but this year everything has gone wrong with the team being hammered by covid and the league not postponing games. Every good player has missed many games (Chabot, Batherson, Pinto, Brown, Norris, etc.) with injuries and the team has made some great additions who look really good with Joseph, Hamonic and obviously Sanderson. If we had these players and better injury luck I think we would be in the hunt and Giroux should put us over we just need to not flop right as the season starts.
Yeah, I don't know...I guess the question is, who do you think you're going to overtake? The likelihood of Florida, Tampa and Toronto seeing any sort of fall off is unlikely, which leaves a couple of wildcard spots.
I'm looking at it like this: To make the playoffs, you need to jump most of, if not all of Boston, Washington, the Islanders (Who I'd argue had an equally tough run this year, but still sit 15 points up on the Sens), Columbus (Who should continue to improve), Buffalo (who the heck knows...they seem to have an incredible run every year for 10 games then die again), Detroit (who will absolutely continue to improve), and hope that teams the rest of the teams don't also improve, like New Jersey (Who have an improving team with a few holes but also have had major health issues this year-Healthy Jack and decent goalteding probably bump them up), Philly (I wouldn't worry too much about them), and Montreal (I mean, I'm not betting on the Habs, but they've also had the worst run of injuries at the NHL level that is imaginable).
I don't know. I just don't see it happening next year. Again though, the future is very bright.