“If Elias Pettersson was coming off a 100-point season and he struggled for the first ten games, I would be the first one saying ‘hey guys, don’t worry, this is a blip, he’s gonna be fine.’ But the problem is, he’s already had the runway. He’s used the runway and then some. The runway has been since, what, February 2024? That’s the runway.” Todd said.
Nizzar chimed in by saying, “The runway is meant to take off, you can’t just endlessly run away, you take the plane off.”
Meanwhile, Todd added, “If this was just a fresh, normal season, then yeah of course you can’t freak out early in the season. But it’s not that. You’re wondering if it’s going to be different than, what are we on here, 120 games? I guess he was injured last year but we’re probably talking 100 regular season games of wildly substandard performance. Last year you can say ‘well, the injury kept him from being prepared for the season and snowballed.’ but as we heard from Elias Pettersson, that does not exist this year. So there’s no reason why it shouldn’t look good right out of the gate.”