God we needed a fricken win...

Agreed on the best game from KC in forever... He looked like a game breaker, and not a guy just cheating, waiting for individual positive stats to be sent his way from Scheif, while doing *the bare minimum* to try and avoid a negative on any given shift... He wasn't that way on Monday... Just a bit worried Rick will see what we all saw, and think "well, guess he got the message I was sending loud and clear" - and then reward him by putting him back with 55 very first chance he has... First chance this new line combo doesn't look "hot" for a period or two... Weird to say, but thank the lord Toffoli was sick when he was... Otherwise Perfetti isn't in this game... And maybe this line puts up 4 goals with or without Perfetti. Maybe Toffolis would have had the same success or even more this game... But... The odds clearly aren't great on that... This was a right place, right time game that he desperately needed for some confidence back in his own abilities again... This year for him as been pretty BS if I'm being real. It's not been great to see a double standard applied to him in particular because he's the youngest guy, and that's basically it. Other players who are more established make the same mistakes or worse, but he gets the worst "punishments/consequences" for it... And it's one thing if he knew that was the case going into this year... That he'd be on a shorter leash then others... ...but from all accounts to start the year, it was supposed to be the exact opposite actually... He was supposed to start the year with a longer leash then other players, and allowed to make some mistakes, in order to have first crack at the second line center role... And ya Vilardi' early injury was "a fair excuse" to move him to the wing... But he never got any real stretch of time in that position. And idk... I know "fair or not fair" isnt the right framing to use in the top level of sports especially... But if Rick was supposed to come in here and fix some of the issues from the old regime, it's been mightily depressing to see this double standard stuff continue. Honestly, if we wanted to use double standards, I think it should be the EXACT opposite... People wearing letters on their jerseys... Players making more then say 5/6 million dollars/the highest paid guys... The "most important/impactful" players should be held to the higher standard, not the lower... While the guys making less money, on rookie/two way/RFA contracts should get a bit longer of a leash on mistakes... The most important players are the ones who should get talked to first about their effort from shift to shift, as they set the tone for the rest of the team... If it's okay for KC to cheat, what message are we sending to new guys this year like Monahan, Toffoli, Iaffalo, Vilardi?!?