I can't wait for this year to get started, but I feel like the team overachieved a bit last year. I see around a 3/4/5 range this year for the team behind Washington and Pittsburgh, and in the mix with New Jersey and Philly.

We royally screwed ourselves in the offseason. I love bringing in Morris to bolster the defense, but you sign Thomas to a ridiculous deal and that 100% hampered our ability to bring back Kessel, which is a big blow. I know Timmy was awesome last year, and he earned his payday, but I don't see the reasoning behind 4 highly paid years, specifically when Tuukka Rask is ready and waiting. I don't think the team took a step back, but we're not much better, I'd say we moved laterally in the offseason.

If Lucic and Wheeler can step up and continue to develop, and Sturm can stay healthy, losing Kessel stings less, but it'll still be felt. The guy would have scored 50 last year if he didn't get mono, in my opinion, at 21 years old too. I can see dealing him for talent, but again the cap crunched us too much and couldn't get anything in return aside from picks, which will likely end up being 20-somethings like Kessel was, except most likely not the caliber.

A team contending for a cup does not make moves like this, disposing of it's best goal scorer.

I agree with that 100%. I supported bringing back Thomas, but not at the price and length we will. I wanted to see a platoon this year with Thomas and Rask, whoever is playing better seeing 60/40 of the time. Then that would put Rask in a position to start full time in 2010-11. Don't get me wrong I'm a huge fan of Timmy's, but he's older, and he just had a special year so he deserved to get paid, but who am I to say he will either do that again or have a poor year showing last year as an abberation (which is a real possibility)?

I really dislike the contract we signed him to.

It's easy to make blind predictions about who will do what and who will be better than who based on the past, but I try to stay away from that. Realistically, and trying to be as unbiased as possible, I think we'll have a good competition with them and Philly for the 3/4/5 spots this year, and if some pieces fall into place we could have a very real shot at a top 2 seed.

This team proved very talented last year, no bones about it, but I think we overachieved to a great extent. I think we'll end up with somewhere between 98-105 poins.