Wow, that lineup, in retrospect, really was a shit sandwich. And Thomas was still in his streaky era. Some weeks he'd be unbeatable, other a sieve. Who was the second best defenseman on that team? Stuart? Ference? They're all pretty crap besides Chara in his prime, as much as I admired the determination of Stuart (remember how they kept telling us he was going to be the next captain?), the scrappiness of Ference, and the tripping over the blue line level of co-ordination Wideman had. And besides maybe Axelsson because of his penalty killing, that bottom six is just terrible. Also, I forgot how long I waited for Sturm to not develop into anything. He was fun to watch skate though.
Oh, and it's been a lot of years since most of those guys have been in the league. Only Lucic, Krejci, Kessel, Thornton, The decently animated corpse of Chara, Stuart, Wideman played regularly in the NHL this season, and Ference only played 6 games this year and said he was going to retire. So that is only about 35% of them still playing, not "all of these guys" as you stated. It's been a few years out of the league for most of them. Out of the young, developing player group,four are still playing in the NHL (Lucic, Krejci, Kessel, Stuart), and only one plays for the Bruins. I wouldn't call that an awesome development record.
