After a painful and frustrating OT loss to the Penguins on Wednesday, John Tortorella called out his veterans a bit, saying he needed more from them.
(Oddly enough you can find almost an identical quote from a game in late December in 2015. And 2016. Perhaps there’s just something special about this time of year.)
The problem with that theory comes when you look at the many significant players missing from the roster right now.
If you’ll allow me an analogy - a hockey team is a lot like a car engine. They’re both resilient, they can both be set up for many different types of performance, and you can pull a rather shocking amount of parts off of them and the damn thing will still do its best to run when you turn the keys.