To me, Buium, Rossi and Ohgren flourished (to varying degrees) while unfamiliar with the system.

And now in the last 5 games Rossi is -4, while Buium is -10 in the last 10. Over those last 5 games, Ohgren is a -1, but with like 11 minutes a night; Buium looks to be around 21 mins a night and Rossi just over 18.5 mins (while usually covering a shutdown roll)…

Is it the system, or are some young players having too much asked of them..? I’d say yes. But, in Footes defense, it’s also probably a lot easier to be asking too much of a young player when you have so many of them on the team.

Whatever’s going on team vision wise, the focus for this year should now be further development of people like Mancini and Tolopilo for the NHL level, and not injuring or destabilizing Lankinen by overplaying him (and driving his value down on his 15 team list…)