There is a little something of sparking here..

It’s not the same type as the excitement from the Briere/Drury/Campbell days but it’s a feeling of never giving up now.
The excitement is still there, no doubt.. but we get it differently now. Our goals are hard work, team goals. The BDC days were just pure scoring talent everywhere.

We rolled 4 lines like there was no tomorrow.

These 4 lines we have now need to be kept.
It is starting to feel like that spark slightly with them.
I don’t know what to say about currently scratched players though.

Now, we don’t feel like the Superpower anymore. We feel like the underdog that won’t back down. That no matter what, can & will make it through anything this year.

We aren’t going to be as overly unstoppable as we were those few years past, we’ll be different.
We know what we have to do, and we know how to do it.
Even if the games are ugly, we’ll still get through.
We’ve been through it enough to know how to use it all to our advantage.

it’s unbelievable how some of our players are playing now.
Miller is hands down the greatest goalie in the league right now.
Then backing that up giving us the mere 17 goals against in 9 games is of course Myers. (By the way.. the Washington Capitals have played two more games than us and they have 32 goals against.)

I don’t even have to start that discussion.

MacArthur with the team leading 5 goals.
Then there’s Kaleta, who I think is playing phenominal.

That was my rant.

7-1-1 so far. Do you believe?

Ok, let’s not get carried away here. We had the same great start to last season and there is certainly no guarantee that this will keep up.

So far we haven’t played too many powerhouses. The Canadiens (6-6-0), Coyotes (7-4-0), Predators (4-6-1), Red Wings (4-4-2), Islanders (2-4-5), Thrashers (4-3-1), Panthers (2-7-1), Lightning (3-3-3), and the Devils (6-4-0) have a sparkling combined record of 38-41-13. In fact only three of those teams are above .500, and we lost to one of those three. The Devils were a good test, but without two top players. We’ve yet to play Washington, Pittsburgh, or any of the other teams considered to be cup favorites (unless you count Detroit, but they’re not playing well right now).

I will say this though – I am quite pleased with the depth on this team. I’m not sure if it will work in terms of cap space but when you can have extra forwards like Mair and extra defenders like Sekera and Lydman – I have a feeling that will pay dividends down the road. And that’s not even counting the guys in Portland (Gerbe, Weber, etc.) who could probably fill in admirably.

In addition to literal depth we seem to be showing a great deal of scoring depth. Nine players have two or more goals in the first nine games – that’s pretty damn good. Being able to comfortably roll four lines is going to pay huge dividends, especially when the games start coming closer together.

We’ve had a forgiving schedule to this point – let’s hope we keep up this pace once the schedule becomes more punishing.