I apologize for not having between period posts. My home ISP was up and down, up and down, I tried making posts, but they kept failing to actually upload to the site, so I said forget it, and I would wait a few hours. Hopefully this post goes through, otherwise I am just spinning my wheels here.
There are 2 equally important yet decisively different aspects to tonights epic clunker. The first is that a few of the goals were directly attributable to rookie mistakes, by actual rookies (as opposed to Marek Malik, Thank God!). The second is that 95% of the team just didn’t show up tonight. We were lackadaisical, uninterested, and even our spectacular goalie looked indifferent at times out there. Not exactly sure why the latter happened, I mean if you can’t get up for a matchup against one of the best teams in the league in your home rink, then what can you get up for?
The former though is to be expected, and frankly condoned. Marc Staal, and Brandon Dubinsky both had very shaky games, particularly Dubinsky. Not only did he turn the puck over twice during the play that led to a Canes goal, but he was constantly running over Straka during rushes. Either Straka was out of position, or he was, and since Straka is the one getting run into, one would like to assume that Dubinsky would be smart enough to vacate that position (despite it being the center ice, where he plays) and backup his speedster winger by hitting the wing, or slowing down, then coming in as the trailing man, It’s pretty amazing how a line that was oozing chemistry just 48 hours ago, looked like they were members of different species of frog trying to play hockey.
The latter is what you and I were pissed about (I hope). That being the horrendous lack of effort from the team tonight. From Shanahan to Jagr, Tyutin to Malik, almost nobody seemed to give a damn, and almost nobody seemed to acknowledge it was a problem (except for the 4th line which was EASILY our best line out there). The power play which scored 4 goals in the last 2 days failed to even generate many scoring chances at all in the entire game. Come to think of it, did they generate a single scoring chance? I’m honestly drawing a blank.
Malik, after playing a solid game against the Sens, looked extremely slow. Although he didn’t do anything that made me want to purchase a sniper rifle, he definitely looked like an injured player. On one particularly terrible sequence he gave up a partial breakaway and literally just stopped skating to see if his linemates could break up the play, which they did.
I really want to crucify the team for this outing, but I’m not. Mostly because I attribute a lot of our problems to youngsters making bad plays when under constant forechecking pressure.
These things happen, forget about it, and move on.
Jeez I hope this goes through *crosses fingers*
