The Road to the Stanley Cup doesn't go through Chicago - as was easily predictable. The Hawks aren't the team they were and they were wildly overachieving in the regular season.
Their CF was OK, and they're a good defensive team, but their xGF and their xGA created a deficit, meaning that without luck in some form, their stats suggested a losing team.
Only Ottawa and the Rangers also made the Playoffs with an expected goals deficit.
This is why I picked the Hawks to lose in the first round to the Predators. And why I still think the Rangers will lose despite being up 3-2 vs Montreal. I actually picked the Senators to win because they bore their opponents into a lull, and that's pretty much happening as Boston can barely muster a shot for whole periods at a time.
This would probably be pretty tedious if I listed all the other things I was right about (the Oilers, Jake Gardiner, Nazem Kadri, ignoring traditional thought when it comes to icing "too many" rookies, the rise of the Leafs,) so I will not do so.
Instead, let us talk Coyotes.
What do they need and what will they do?
The one thing the Coyotes need this offseason is a new direction. Currently they have a new school 28 year old GM who doesn't have the same amount of power as their old-school coach who coaches like it's 1998 and is well known to fear Y2K.
Conflicting ideologies just don't work.
Now, that is not to say that people of opposite ideas and opinions shouldn't work together, because they should - it's what makes any organization good - but on the Coyotes these do not seem to be blending together to get the best of both worlds. It seems more like a diametrically opposed power struggle.
But maybe I'm wrong. It's happened before.
What the Coyotes should do is fire Dave Tippett and hire Daryl Sutter. Sutter may be old school, but he's a hybrid who understands the importance of shot attempts. He's also shown a remarkable ability to adjust his coaching to the trends of the league - much like Mike Babcock and really, he should be the Coyotes number-one priority.
Of course, there's a whole back-room will-they-or-won't-they thing going on with ownership and the minority owner which I don't want to get into and can't be bothered to care about anymore.
Who will lead the Coyotes? A hopped up on cough syrup Lil Wayne couldn't do any worse than the current status quo is what I'm saying.
Get rid of Tippett and bring in Sutter.
Then keep this in mind: the Leafs added nine rookies to a core of in-their-prime players. That's why it worked. They had Gardiner, Kadri, van Riemsdyk, Bozak and Komarov.
If the Coyotes want to emulate this they have to make some moves because they currently can't come close. Which Coyotes are currently above average players playing in their prime?
Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
That's one.
By my count, the Coyotes need four mid-twenties players in order to go forward with a competitive team built around young players Domi, Duclair, Perlini, Dvorak, Strome, Keller, Chychrun and Deangelo.
That's a lot of talent. But they need those guys in their prime to make it work.
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