So now we're five games into the season and we're getting to see who is having a slow start and who is coming out of the gates and taking the game by the horns. Well clearly with 4 points in 5 games and an even more obvious effort against Ottawa, this kid is headed in the right direction. I had a feeling Andrei was going to have a good year with his brother gone and being on a contract year. Less distractions, all he has to do is play his game and boy is he playing his game. I know it's only five games into the season but the results thus far have been good for Andrei. He's playing his game and he's doing it well.
He's a guy with size and speed, a good shot too. I guess it was only a matter of time before he had a good start. Hopefully we see more of this Andrei going forward, clearly there's been an improvement somewhere in his game, attitude and overall self. He appears to be a lot more focused out there this year. I don't want to blame Sergei but it's tough not to when you see the night and day differences of Andrei after his brothers departure. To me Andrei doesn't seem like the partying type or the type to be a slacker but it's possible his brother Sergei was causing him to lose focus. Injuries certainly didn't help his game throughout his career thus far either. For the most part I think we can all agree that somewhere between being injured, having rocky stretches, dealing with the media and babysitting his brother, Andrei wasn't playing like the player we knew he was capable of being.
I remember when Andrei first came up to the team full time, the hype surrounding the kid was incredible. Much like the Subban hype of right now. I see no reason given his size and skill that he can't be the player we all originally thought he could become. The 25 year old winger is now entering his 4th NHL season, he's shown he's capable of 30 goals having scored 26 goals in 78 games in 2007-08 so no reason to think he can't pull it off now that he's in 2010-11 and playing with that added fire we've all wanted to see him play with for a very long time.
It's only five games in and I'm happy with my player predictions thus far. Plekanec, Andrei and Price have all played well and I had faith that they would. When Markov is back to 100% he will essentially be feeding guys like Plekanec, Andrei and Cammalleri on a regular basis, having him healthy will really help to increase the points totals for guys like this that rely so much on a power play quarterback to be successful. Sure they can win games without him, we've already seen last year how our team can persevere without him, it's something they haven't been able to do in a really long time save last season. When we have him though we become much like an unstoppable force winning 70% of our games with him in the line up. It's almost unheard of for a team to rely on a guy that much and while we might not drop off to 30% wins without him like we used to, we still rely on the guy to get our offensive players on the map. I'm sure guys like Plek and Andrei knows this all to well.
Point is with how well we've been doing without Markov it's going to be really nice to see how far we can go with him when healthy and 100% and furthermore what a guy like Andrei can do to increase his stats or ppg average once Markov is in the lineup. I can see Kostitsyn getting around 30g 30a and 60pt if healthy and with Markov in the lineup. Time will tell but I believe the new beginning is now underway. It's only five games in but five more games will tell, and then another five and so on.
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