playmaker26 wrote:
Yes but my point is with the management. Tampa Bay and Atlanta need to clean house with personnel before I give them any chance to really improve.
why? Atlanta made avery good pick in bogosian, and has eased him into the NHL well. They have Ron Hainsey as a value defender to keep the heat off of bogosian a little bit while he matures. They also have kovalchuk, little, enstrom, and two really good young goalies in pavelic and lehtonen.
Throw in the fact that they\'re due for another good draft pick this year, and i think atlanta management is doing just fine.
As far as tampa bay goes... i understand there were some hiccups early on with their transition, but i think they made some really solid decisions down the stretch. 1) they didn\'t trade vinny lecavalier. 2) steve stamkos was brought along properly by 3) the addition of rick tocchet. 4) they have a top 3 draft pick this year...
i really don\'t see how these teams are in that bad a position when you really sit back and think about it... managerial or otherwise. Sure, TB would probably prefer to still have boyle instead of malone, but malone is definitely a tocchet type of player... i wouldn\'t be surprised if he rebounds next year for the lightning.
The only thing that i would even consider as a negative for these two teams is their markets. If they don\'t have the money, then that could possibly cause problems down the road, but i think they are in a very good position (as long as they stick to their guns), to be very good teams within 3 years.
When you consider that 4 of the 5 southeastern teams have been to the stanley cup finals (2 of them have won the cup), since 1995... you have to believe that they can get their ducks in a row and put together some good teams.
BTW, no other division has had 4 different representatives in the stanley cup finals since 1995. The southeast is the only one... just for the record.