JohnM wrote:

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Here's my opinion: 1) Goaltending - we are getting very poor goaltending from Theo. This does not look like it's turning around anytime soon. We are missing what is supposed to be our biggest strength this year. 2) Defence is not good after Markov. We have Rivet and Souray who should be #3 and #4. We are missing a true #1 defenceman. 3) We do not have a #2 line so we have now put all our eggs in one basket and teams can easily key in on the first line. Solutions: 1) Either we stick with Theo or trade him. A decision needs to be made for the future here. 2) If we could bring in a #1 defenceman we could have a legit defence. This should have been done in the previous offseason and will now need to be done in the upcoming offseason. 3) Time to bring in a decent #2 center and shed the Bonk's and Ribeiro's of this team. We also have too many players of the same mold, let's pick a couple and go with them. Kovy will never try hard during the season so he can't be counted on to bring intensity to the team until the playoffs hit.

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I have to agree with you for the most part Johnny. The talent on this team was highly overestimated by Gainey and it is showing. The problem with Theo is we need to stick with him. With his salary and his save percentage (4th worse in league right now) there will be no takers. So suck it up boys and hope for the best.

We also have too many Bulis/Begin/Murray type players and no goal scoring. I blame this on drafting more than trading. Looking at the Ottawa lineup last night. Guys like Alfredsson and Spezza. Draft picks. Top 10 scorers. We do not have a top 50. I appreciate Saks contribution but when your top scorer has 12 goals, something is wrong with your team (I include Kovalev and Zednick in that).

But what bothers me and scares me is that dressing room. It is painfully obvious there are major, major issues in there. All you need to do is look at the bench when someone scores as compared to other teams. Depending on who scores, you have small little groups showing emotion while everyone else sits there emotionless. I am not advocating Souray for Captain or hero. But I commend him for dropping them the other night. Today with my team something similar happened. We were down 3-0 and one of my players really laid out one of theirs with a clean hit. He was then jumped by another player and beat him handily in a fight. The key difference is that my team responded and rallied around that. Even though I lost my best forward to a game misconduct, it gave us life and we rallied around and won 5-3. This is what should have happened after the Souray fight the other night. But, instead, what we saw was total apethy. Had Souray not fought McCarty, I can guarantee you that little Saks would have been run all night.