In my ten years of coaching hockey from Atom to Bantam AA, I found that the best way to build a team was to have a great goalie and build a strong defence, and the goals would come. Anytime the best players on my teams were all forwards, it turned out to be a frustrating year of "underachievement".

So it's interesting how well the teams with good defences and goaltending in these playoffs are doing.

We are building some impressive offensive depth already, and I say that we should really concentrate on building the defence this off season through the draft and through the trade route. We won alot of games that were wide open run-and-gun this regular season, and did alot worse in games that were tight checking.

Now I'd love to see us run-and-gun our way into the lead in a game, and then be able to switch and shut it down when we need to.

Karlsson realized in the playoffs that his usual all out offensice style wasn't going to work, and we were not adept enough at changing the way we played without him playing 4th forward.

Yes, we had a great year considering, but now exepectations will be higher, and I'd love to see this team shore up the defence.

I'm glad to hear BM talking about acquiring a defensive dman. I can't wait to see who that is going to be.