smithers joe

Learning to pick his spots better.

No Tanev.  His confidence has been shot half this year so far.  Making more giveaways, getting pushed off the puck.  He is shooting less effectively too imo.

This summer's disastrous set of decisions/indecisions by Benning has been very bad for a bunch of players, Hughes among them.  Bad for Horvat and Pettersson too of course, and Miller and Virt too.  Only been good for players who are finally getting a chance like Juolevi. Or who aren't injured for the first time in years (Boeser and Sutter.)  The Eriksson, Beagle, Roussel (and Edler, tbh) signings finally caught up with Benning.  Obviously they should have re-signed Stecher, obviously Toffoli had to be worked in somehow.  And they should have got a cheap, easy goaltender back up for Demko.  It's the cap space and the inability to make the changes we can all see are needed that is killing the team.  Key young guys like Hughes and Pettersson are not stupid, they know they are working with less, have more put on them than last year.  To go from being a legitimate contender last year (at least as indicated in the playoffs) to a very average one this year is not going to be missed by the guys living in it.  At the moment, the less you are paid, the better you are and the more responsibility you carry.  Not good. A few years from now we may see that what Hughes and Boeser are really doing right now is auditioning for their next team; this summer was a watershed for a lot of the fans, can't see it wouldn't have had some effect on the players.

he actually was more active last night.