Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Well, you're just restating our basic disagreement. You are confident that all these new guys could make up a shortfall, and I'm not. Especially not in the case of Connolly.
It's not just the new guys, though. It's everyone. I mean, let's say Kessel adds 4 to his total, Lupul adds 2 to his and Versteeg's combined totals, Armstrong stays healthy and puts up 16 (roughly his career average) adding 8 to his total, add in a handful more goals from the blueline, and we're back where we started. I mean, I'm not exactly talking about unreasonable gains or wild career seasons or anything. It really doesn't take all that much for the 15 other skaters to make up the difference of 20 goals over the course of a season. Yeah, I'm confident that the offence won't take a significant dip just because one line has dip in production. I mean, the team scored roughly the same amount of goals in 09/10 that they did in 10/11 without the Kulemin-Grabovski-MacArthur line putting up the totals they did - and there's more talent on the 11/12 roster than there was back then. I really think you're just being unnecessarily pessimistic about all this. The Leafs will score at least 210-215 goals next season, right around where they've been for the past couple seasons. I have no doubts about that, and that's not being overconfident about anything either - I mean, that total will still put them in the bottom 1/3 of the league - outside of some devastating injuries or everyone in the top 6 having terrible seasons, that's just where the team's overall talent level puts them as a rough baseline